If you don't know yet or haven't done it yet, create a repository with the same name as your GitHub username.

The README.md of this repository will be displayed on your GitHub user profile like below :

Go to Developer settings from your GitHub account settings and select Personal access tokens to create a new token.

You'll need to create a token with the public_repo right so this GitHub Action has enough permissions to push the updated SVG metrics on your personal repository.

If you choose to use a bot account, you can put public_repo rights to the bot token and invite it as a collaborator on your personal profile repository so it has push access. This way, you can use a personnal token with no rights instead and reduce security issues.

Go to the Settings of your personal repository to create a new secret and paste your GitHub token here.

Create a new workflow from the Actions tab of your personal repository and paste the following. Don't forget to put your GitHub username !

name: GitHub metrics as SVG image
on:
  # Schedule the metrics update
  schedule: [{cron: "0 * * * *"}]
  # (optional) Force update a commit occurs on master branch
  # All commits tagged with [Skip GitHub Action] will be ignored by this GitHub action
  push: {branches: "master"}
jobs:
  github-metrics:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
        with:

          # Your GitHub token
          token: ${{ secrets.METRICS_TOKEN }}

          # Additional options
          # ==========================================

          # GitHub username (defaults to "token" user)
          user: my-github-user

          # If provided, this token will be used instead of "token" for commit operations
          # You can specify a bot account to avoid virtually increasing your stats due to this action commits
          committer_token: ${{ secrets.METRICS_BOT_TOKEN }}

          # Name of SVG image output
          filename: github-metrics.svg

          # Template to use (see src/templates to get a list of supported templates)
          template: classic

          # Enable Google PageSpeed metrics for account attached website
          # See https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/get-started for more informations
          plugin_pagespeed: no
          pagespeed_token: ${{ secrets.PAGESPEED_TOKEN }}

          # Enable lines of code metrics
          plugin_lines: no

          # Enable repositories traffic metrics
          # *Provided GitHub token require full "repo" permissions
          plugin_traffic: no

          # Enable coding habits metrics
          plugin_habits: no

          # Skip commits flagged with [Skip GitHub Action] from commits count
          plugin_selfskip: no

          # Enable debug logs
          debug: no

A new SVG image will be generated and committed to your repository on each run. Because of this, the amount of your commits could be virtually increased which is probably unwanted.

To avoid this, you can use a bot token instead, which will still be able to track metrics of all your public repositories. If you want to also track your private repositories metrics, you'll need to pass a personal token with full repo permissions to your personal token, and use the committer_token parameter to pass the bot account token.

If you don't want to use a bot token, you can use the plugin_selfskip which will count out all your commits from your personal repository tagged with [Skip GitHub Action] made with your account, but these commits will still be linked to your account.

Edit your README.md on your repository and link it your image :

![GitHub metrics](https://github.com/my-github-user/my-github-user/blob/master/github-metrics.svg)

Since GitHub API has rate limitations, the shared instance has a few limitations :

• Images are cached for 1 hour
  • Your generated metrics won't be updated during this amount of time
  • If you enable or disable plugins in url parameters, you'll need to wait for cache expiration before these changes are applied
• The rate limiter is enabled, although it won't affect already cached users metrics
• Plugins which consume additional requests or require elevated token rights are disabled. The following plugins are available :
  • PageSpeed plugin can be enabled by passing ?pagespeed=1, but metrics generation can take up some time when it has not been cached yet
  • Languages plugin can be enabled by passing ?languages=1
  • Follow-up plugin can be enabled by passing ?followup=1

To ensure maximum availability, consider deploying your own instance or use the GitHub Action.

You'll need a server where you can install and configure apps.

In your account settings, go to Developer settings and select Personal access tokens to create a new token. As explained above, you do not need to grant additional permissions to the token unless you want to enable additional plugins.

Connect to your server and ensure NodeJS is installed (see tested versions in the build workflows).

Then run the following commands :

# Clone this repository (or your fork)
git clone https://github.com/lowlighter/metrics.git
# Install dependancies
cd metrics/
npm install --only=prod
# Copy the settings exemple
cp settings.example.json settings.json

Open and edit settings.json to configure your instance using a text editor of your choice.

{
  //GitHub API token
    "token":"****************************************",

  //Users who are authorized to generate metrics on your instance
  //An empty list or an undefined value will be treated as "unrestricted"
    "restricted":["my-github-user"],

  //Lifetime of generated metrics (cached version will be served instead during this time window)
    "cached":3600000,

  //Number of simultaneous users who can use your instance before sending a "503 error"
  //A zero or an undefined value will be treated as "unlimited"
    "maxusers":0,

  //Rate limiter (see https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-rate-limit)
  //A null or undefined value will be treated as "disabled"
    "ratelimiter":{
      "windowMs":60000,
      "max":100
    },

  //Listening port used by your instance
    "port":3000,

  //Optimize SVG image
    "optimize":true,

  //Debug mode
  //When enabled, templates will be reloaded at each request and cache will be disabled
  //Intended for easier development and disabled by default
    "debug":false,

  //Template configuration
    "templates":{
      //Default template
        "default":"classic",
      //Enabled template. Leave empty to enable all defined templates
        "enabled":[],
    },

  //Plugins configuration
    "plugins":{
      //Google PageSpeed plugin
        "pagespeed":{
          //Enable or disable this plugin. Pass "?pagespeed=1" in url to generate website's performances
            "enabled":false,
          //Pagespeed token (see https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/v5/get-started)
            "token":"****************************************"
        },
      //Lines plugin
        "lines":{
          //Enable or disable this plugin. Pass "?lines=1" in url to compute total lines you added/removed on your repositories
            "enabled":true
        },
      //Traffic plugin
        "traffic":{
          //Enable or disable this plugin. Pass "?traffic=1" in url to compute page views on your repositories in last two weeks
          //*This requires a GitHub API token with push access
            "enabled":true
        },
      //Habits plugin
        "habits":{
          //Enable or disable this plugin. Pass "?habits=1" in url to generate coding habits based on your recent activity
            "enabled":true,
          //Number of events used to compute coding habits (capped at 100 by GitHub API)
            "from":100,
        }
    }
}

Start your instance once you've finished configuring it :

npm start

And you should be able to access it on the port you provided !

Edit your README.md on your repository and include your metrics from your server domain :

![GitHub metrics](https://my-personal-domain.com/my-github-user)

If you want to ensure that your instance will be restarted after reboots or crashes, you should setup it as a service. This is described below for linux-like systems with systemd.

Create a new service file in /etc/systemd/system :

nano /etc/systemd/system/github_metrics.service

Paste the following and edit it with the correct paths :

[Unit]
Description=GitHub metrics
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/metrics
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /path/to/metrics/index.mjs

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload services, enable it, start it and check it is up and running :

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable github_metrics
systemctl start github_metrics
systemctl status github_metrics

The following errors code can be encountered if on a server instance :

• 400 Bad request : Query is invalid (e.g. unsupported template)
• 403 Forbidden : User is not allowed in restricted users list
• 404 Not found : GitHub API did not found the requested user
• 429 Too many requests : Thrown when rate limiter is trigerred
• 500 Internal error : An error ocurred while generating metrics images (logs can be seen if you're the owner of the instance)
• 503 Service unavailable : Maximum user capacity reached, only already cached images can be accessed for now

This plugin may require an API key that you can generate here although it does not seem mandatory. It is still advised to provide it to avoid 429 HTTP errors.

The website attached to the GitHub profile will be the one to be audited. Expect 10 to 30 seconds to generate the results.

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_pagespeed: yes
    pagespeed_token: ${{ secrets.PAGESPEED_TOKEN }}

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?pagespeed=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "plugins":{
    "pagespeed":{
      "enabled":true,
      "token":"****************************************"
    }
  }

It will consume an additional GitHub request per repository.

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_lines: yes

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?lines=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "plugins":{
    "lines":{
      "enabled":true,
    }
  }

It will consume an additional GitHub request per repository.

Because of GitHub REST API limitation, the provided token will require full repo permissions to access traffic informations.

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    token: ${{ secrets.METRICS_TOKEN }}
    plugin_traffic: yes

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?traffic=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "token":"****************************************",
  "plugins":{
    "traffic":{
      "enabled":true,
    }
  }

It will consume an additional GitHub request per event fetched.

Because of GitHub REST API limitation, the provided token will require full repo permissions to access private events. By default, events that cannot be fetched will be ignored so you can still use this plugin with a public token.

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_habits: yes

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?habits=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "plugins":{
    "habits":{
      "enabled":true
    }
  }

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_followup: yes

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?followup=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "plugins":{
    "followup":{
      "enabled":true,
    }
  }

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_languages: yes

Add the following to your settings.json and pass ?languages=1 in url when generating metrics.

  "plugins":{
    "languages":{
      "enabled":true,
    }
  }

It will consume an additional GitHub request per page fetched of your commit activity from your personal repository.

Add the following to your workflow :

- uses: lowlighter/metrics@latest
  with:
    # ... other options
    plugin_selfskip: yes