05-graphql-limits.md

GraphQL Limits

The GitHub GraphQL API has some limits to prevent abuse. These limits are subject to change.

Queries

GraphQL queries come at a cost (non-valuta) which are defined in docs in detail. The description below is ment as a brief summary.

Get Rate Limit

The following query returns the rate limit information. The limitation is defined as

• limit: max points/h the token can consume
• cost: the query points
• remaining: remaining points/h
• resetAt: moment when the limit gets restored

query {
  viewer {
    login
  }
  rateLimit {
    limit
    cost
    remaining
    resetAt
  }
}

Query Cost Estimation and Calculation

Query

The subsequent calculation is based on the following query:

query {
  viewer {
    repositories(first: 50) {
      edges {
        repository: node {
          name
          pullRequests(first: 20) {
            edges {
              pullRequest: node {
                title
                comments(first: 10) {
                  edges {
                    comment: node {
                      bodyHTML
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The query requires 1,051 requests to fulfill:

• Request of repositories is 1 event though 50 are requested as we get it from viewer object at once.
• The requested 20 pull requests are from 50 separate repositories, so 50 requests are made.
• The requested 10 comments are from 1,000 potential total pull requests, so 1,000 requests are made.

The queries from above can be calculated as follows:

Number of Nodes

Query	Nodes	Sum
Repositories	50	50
Pull Requests	50 * 20	1000
Comments	50 * 20 * 10	10000
Total		11050

Query Cost

Query	Queries	Sum
Repositories via viewer	1	1
Pull Requests from 50 repos	50	50
Comments from 20 PRs of 50 repos	50 * 20	1000
Total		1051

Query Points

Dividing the sum of the queries of 1051 by 100 gives final score of approximately 11.

Get Point Value of Query

The query cost can received by using the rateLimit query. The cost field returns the cost of the query. Append the rateLimit to the query from above as shown below. The returned result is a actual cost of 10.

query {
  viewer {
    repositories(first: 50) {
      edges {
        repository: node {
          name
          pullRequests(first: 20) {
            edges {
              pullRequest: node {
                title
                comments(first: 10) {
                  edges {
                    comment: node {
                      bodyHTML
                    }
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
  rateLimit {
    cost
  }
}