---
title: "GitHubIssueViewer"
id: githubissueviewer
slug: "/githubissueviewer"
description: "This component fetches and parses GitHub issues into Haystack documents."
---

# GitHubIssueViewer

This component fetches and parses GitHub issues into Haystack documents.

|                                        |                                                                                                                                                  |
| -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Most common position in a pipeline** | Right at the beginning of a pipeline and before a [ChatPromptBuilder](../builders/chatpromptbuilder.mdx) that expects the content of a GitHub issue as input |
| **Mandatory run variables**            | "url": A GitHub issue URL                                                                                                                        |
| **Output variables**                   | "documents": A list of documents containing the main issue and its comments                                                                      |
| **API reference**                      | [GitHub](/reference/integrations-github)                                                                                                                |
| **GitHub link**                        | https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-core-integrations/tree/main/integrations/github                                                         |

## Overview

`GitHubIssueViewer` takes a GitHub issue URL and returns a list of documents where:

- The first document contains the main issue content
- Subsequent documents contain the issue comments (if any)

Each document includes rich metadata such as the issue title, number, state, creation date, author, and more.

### Authorization

The component can work without authentication for public repositories, but for private repositories or to avoid rate limiting, you can provide a GitHub personal access token.

You can set the token using the `GITHUB_API_KEY` environment variable, or pass it directly during initialization via the `github_token` parameter.

To create a personal access token, visit [GitHub's token settings page](https://github.com/settings/tokens).

### Installation

Install the GitHub integration with pip:

```shell
pip install github-haystack
```

## Usage

:::note
Repository Placeholder

To run the following code snippets, you need to replace the `owner/repo` with your own GitHub repository name.
:::

### On its own

Basic usage without authentication:

```python
from haystack_integrations.components.connectors.github import GitHubIssueViewer

viewer = GitHubIssueViewer()
result = viewer.run(url="https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/issues/123")

print(result)
```

```bash
{'documents': [Document(id=3989459bbd8c2a8420a9ba7f3cd3cf79bb41d78bd0738882e57d509e1293c67a, content: 'sentence-transformers = 0.2.6.1
haystack = latest
farm = 0.4.3 latest branch

In the call to Emb...', meta: {'type': 'issue', 'title': 'SentenceTransformer no longer accepts \'gpu" as argument', 'number': 123, 'state': 'closed', 'created_at': '2020-05-28T04:49:31Z', 'updated_at': '2020-05-28T07:11:43Z', 'author': 'predoctech', 'url': 'https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/issues/123'}), Document(id=a8a56b9ad119244678804d5873b13da0784587773d8f839e07f644c4d02c167a, content: 'Thanks for reporting!
Fixed with #124 ', meta: {'type': 'comment', 'issue_number': 123, 'created_at': '2020-05-28T07:11:42Z', 'updated_at': '2020-05-28T07:11:42Z', 'author': 'tholor', 'url': 'https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/issues/123#issuecomment-635153940'})]}
```

### In a pipeline

The following pipeline fetches a GitHub issue, extracts relevant information, and generates a summary:

```python
from haystack import Pipeline
from haystack.components.builders.chat_prompt_builder import ChatPromptBuilder
from haystack.components.generators.chat import OpenAIChatGenerator
from haystack.dataclasses import ChatMessage
from haystack_integrations.components.connectors.github import GitHubIssueViewer

## Initialize components
issue_viewer = GitHubIssueViewer()

prompt_template = [
    ChatMessage.from_system("You are a helpful assistant that analyzes GitHub issues."),
    ChatMessage.from_user(
        "Based on the following GitHub issue and comments:\n"
        "{% for document in documents %}"
        "{% if document.meta.type == 'issue' %}"
        "**Issue Title:** {{ document.meta.title }}\n"
        "**Issue Description:** {{ document.content }}\n"
        "{% else %}"
        "**Comment by {{ document.meta.author }}:** {{ document.content }}\n"
        "{% endif %}"
        "{% endfor %}\n"
        "Please provide a summary of the issue and suggest potential solutions."
    )
]

prompt_builder = ChatPromptBuilder(template=prompt_template, required_variables="*")
llm = OpenAIChatGenerator(model="gpt-4o-mini")

## Create pipeline
pipeline = Pipeline()
pipeline.add_component("issue_viewer", issue_viewer)
pipeline.add_component("prompt_builder", prompt_builder)
pipeline.add_component("llm", llm)

## Connect components
pipeline.connect("issue_viewer.documents", "prompt_builder.documents")
pipeline.connect("prompt_builder.prompt", "llm.messages")

## Run pipeline
issue_url = "https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/issues/123"
result = pipeline.run(data={"issue_viewer": {"url": issue_url}})

print(result["llm"]["replies"][0])
```
