Can I retrieve a GitHub PR review status via the API? - github

Question

I do not want to retrieve the review's "state" ( e.g., 'open', 'closed' ) but rather the status (e.g., 'approved'). I cannot see a way to do this through the API however. It always returns an empty JSON array, regardless of the status.
For example, this _should_ return a status of "approved", but it returns nothing:
https://github.mydomain.com/api/v3/repos/myOrg/myRepo/statuses/8675309
results in:
[
]
Is this operation ('review status') not supported through the API?

Answer 1

You should actually be trying a different API. According to the Status API documentation of GitHub,
The status API allows external services to mark commits with an error, failure, pending, or success state, which is then reflected in pull requests involving those commits.
So the Status API provides the status of every commit as part of a PR, for eg, if the build failed or succeeded as part of the commit push. The below request would only return the statuses as part of a reference.
GET /repos/:owner/:repo/commits/:ref/statuses
What you need is the Reviews API, where you can get the reviews for a PR, which would have the state field that you are expecting. The API is
GET /repos/:owner/:repo/pulls/:number/reviews
And a sample response is
[
{
"id": 80,
"node_id": "MDE3OlB1bGxSZXF1ZXN0UmV2aWV3ODA=",
"user": {
"login": "octocat",
"id": 1,
"node_id": "MDQ6VXNlcjE=",
"avatar_url": "https://github.com/images/error/octocat_happy.gif",
"gravatar_id": "",
"url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat",
"html_url": "https://github.com/octocat",
"followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/followers",
"following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/following{/other_user}",
"gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/gists{/gist_id}",
"starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/starred{/owner}{/repo}",
"subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/subscriptions",
"organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/orgs",
"repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/repos",
"events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/events{/privacy}",
"received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/octocat/received_events",
"type": "User",
"site_admin": false
},
"body": "Here is the body for the review.",
"commit_id": "ecdd80bb57125d7ba9641ffaa4d7d2c19d3f3091",
"state": "APPROVED",
"html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/12#pullrequestreview-80",
"pull_request_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/pulls/12",
"_links": {
"html": {
"href": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/pull/12#pullrequestreview-80"
},
"pull_request": {
"href": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/pulls/12"
}
}
}
]
Note that the state field in the response has the APPROVED state that you are looking for.
More info on the same in the GitHub documentation of Reviews API.