x/pkgsite: API for pkg.go.dev

[rhcarvalho]

Prior to pkg.go.dev, godoc.org has had a JSON API that can be used to, among other things, discover importers of a given package.

Example: https://api.godoc.org/importers/golang.org/x/net/html

Given that pkg.go.dev does a much better job at tracking importers thanks to Go Modules and the Module Proxy, it would be nice if the community could get access to a public API similar to that of godoc.org.

[julieqiu]

@rhcarvalho - it would be helpful to get a sense of what your current use cases are for api.godoc.org, and feature requests are for an API for pkg.go.dev.

It sounds like getting the importers for a package is one of them. With pkg.go.dev being module aware, what specific information about importers would be useful to surface via an API?

For example:

• importers for a specific version of a package
• only importers of the latest version of a package
• any importer for all versions of a package
• something else?

Additionally, what other information would be useful to you to surface via an API?

/cc @tbpg who has also mentioned wanting an API for pkg.go.dev

[rhcarvalho]

Without much thought, having an API to answer the more specific question "what are the importers of a specific version of a package" would make plausible to derive the answer to the other items in your list.

At the moment I consume the godoc.org API and scrape data from pkg.go.dev to answer the question "who uses my package". As far as I can tell the data in the "Imported By" go.dev tab is unrelated to the version of the package I'm currently browsing.

Here are the other endpoints in the GoDoc API: https://github.com/golang/gddo/blob/7365cb292b8bfd13dfe514a18b207b9cc70e6ceb/gddo-server/main.go#L901-L904

• /search: takes a q parameter. Can be useful to explore known packages/modules.
• /packages: attempts to return all known packages, no pagination. Doesn't seem too usable as is.
• /importers/: useful, hard to compute without central knowledge.
• /imports/: dispensable, easy to compute offline with go list.

So if we need a more specific request, here it is:

api.go.dev MVP

• /importers/{module-or-package}/@v/<version>: returns the list of importers of a given module/package at a given version. URL scheme could be tuned to match the Go Proxy specification (go help goproxy).
• /search/: matches the functionality of https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=hello, returns JSON instead.

[tbpg]

Another endpoint idea (standalone or as part of a set of info returned for a module): available versions of a given module.

[myitcv]

@tbpg

Another endpoint idea (standalone or as part of a set of info returned for a module): available versions of a given module.

Shouldn't people use cmd/go for that? Not least because of the fall-through semantics of the go env GOPROXY` variable. Noting #37367

[julieqiu]

What information beyond https://proxy.golang.org/<module>/@v/list would be provided by that endpoint?

[tbpg]

Shouldn't people use cmd/go for that? Not least because of the fall-through semantics of the go env GOPROXY` variable. Noting #37367

There are some cases where cmd/go might not be available and a normal web API would be helpful. I think it's reasonable to assume pkg.go.dev will only return the modules/versions it knows about.

What information beyond https://proxy.golang.org/<module>/@v/list would be provided by that endpoint?

None. That works. :)

[myitcv]

There are some cases where cmd/go might not be available and a normal web API would be helpful

I'd be wary of encouraging tool authors to query pkg.go.dev/a proxy directly. Because it could well introduce skew compared to the answers from cmd/go.

[adamdecaf]

In my use-case I don't want to execute cmd/go binaries as I just want to grab some metadata (i.e. detected license of all dependencies) from a dozen modules and organize it on a webpage. If I need local clones of those modules it really complicates this internal tool.

[myitcv]

In #37952 I raised the question of whether module/package license file information could be surfaced in the output of cmd/go list. Following a conversation on yesterday's golang-tools call, we concluded that doing so would be a bad idea; reasons summarised in #37952 (comment).

@ianthehat instead suggested exposing the information via a pkg.go.dev API, leveraging the fact that the content and presentation on pkg.go.dev has already jumped through the relevant legal hoops.

This comment is therefore to explicitly request that we include license file information in the API. Thank you!

[tiegz]

👋 Thanks for all the new Go tools like pkg.go.dev, they're super useful. Some input on this topic from the perspective of Libraries.io:

• +1 to a /search/ endpoint, or maybe just adding pagination to this url so it's possible to get a list of all packages: https://index.golang.org/index?since=TIME&limit=LIMIT. Many popular package repositories offer a full listing like this, e.g. https://packagist.org/packages/list.json for Packagist

• What information beyond https://proxy.golang.org//@v/list would be provided by that endpoint?

Currently to get the publish times for all versions, you have to make N+1 requests: one for @v/list and then @v/xxx.info for each version and grab the "Time" value for each one. Assuming it's difficult to change the Go proxy spec, an API endpoint that returns all versions with metadata would be really nice.

• As far as I can tell the data in the "Imported By" go.dev tab is unrelated to the version of the package I'm currently browsing.

Anyone know if there are plans to fix this?

[jba]

• As far as I can tell the data in the "Imported By" go.dev tab is unrelated to the version of the package I'm currently browsing.

Anyone know if there are plans to fix this?

No immediate plans. We currently gather that information from import statements in the code, so there is no version information attached. The go.mod file doesn't have all the version information we need.

So we understand it's an approximation and we want to fix it, but it's going to take some time.

[pombredanne]

@julieqiu my use for an API would be to:

1. search and list packages
2. for a package, access all the information as available for a given package in each of the tabs, such as here https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/gin-gonic/gin?tab=licenses ... basically everything that is available as HTML in the frontend https://github.com/golang/pkgsite/tree/master/internal/frontend should be available in a JSON api

[pombredanne]

@julieqiu oh and please do not retire http://api.godoc.org/packages unless there is an alternative!

[eclipseo]

it would be helpful to get a sense of what your current use cases are for api.godoc.org, and feature requests are for an API for pkg.go.dev.

As a downstream package maintainer for Fedora, I'm also interested in an API. We have our own tool, Anitya, to track package releases, but it was not designed to track GIT commits. And many Go packages still don't publish version. So any information about latest published commit, with info like date of the commit, new dependencies, would be very helpful. I would gather data from the API in Python and compare it to the latest version we have for a given package.

I'm also interested in getting the License info, so we could find recursively all the licenses used in a static binary.

[pombredanne]

and BTW my general use case is for https://github.com/nexB/scancode-toolkit and related projects to provide my users with license, origin and dependencies details. And for https://github.com/nexb/vulnerablecode where we provide vulnerabilities details.

[srenatus]

@ZiViZiViZ https://github.com/golang/gddo/wiki/API

[seankhliao]

please keep this issue on topic and refer questions to
https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Questions

[shellscape]

Rather than hiding what I'd consider a lot of really useful comments by folks (because I landed here for many of the same reasons they did, and there is extremely little available with regard to go package APIs) it would be infinitely more useful to explain to folks how to use the wiki for questions - or specify that tangential and related questions here are not welcome, and folks should seek the answers on the wiki. As it is now, that curt reply seems to imply that we should post questions on the wiki itself, which I doubt is what you're actually after.

The go team has been kicking this can for years, so users are naturally going to have a lot of questions. This reply #36785 (comment) specifically asks users what features they're after in an API - thus the issue is fair game for feature-related questions. Go packages are the very last major ecosystem package registry to lack a comprehensive API and that which doesn't make its data readily available. Because of this, people are naturally going to have a myriad of questions about trying to access that data. I'd humbly ask @seankhliao to be a bit more gracious in your moderation of this issue.

[golightlyb]

• Use case: generating static documentation, or running a local documentation server, but wanting to be able to query (with javascript, at the time of the page view by a web browser) the "[Imported by: NNN]" number that appears if instead viewed on pkg.go.dev.

• currently api.godoc.org/importers is returning {"error":{"message":"Internal Server Error"}}

[rsc]

For what it's worth, we have been running api.godoc.org as an unmonitored service (meaning we don't page people for it), approximately "best effort" although even that may be too generous. We discovered today that it has been down for 30+ days because the disk filled. Given that being down for a month was a non-issue, we've decided to leave it down.

The godoc.org redirects will continue to run (approximately forever), but api.godoc.org will no longer be accessible. Or rather it will continue to be inaccessible.

[golightlyb]

@rsc fair enough if this is the decision but the previous comment is mine, right at the start of that 30+ day period, saying it's down, and three people agreeing.

If this is the decision, again, fine - but I submit that it shouldn't be based on people not complaining because to be fair I raised this pretty much as soon as it happened and it was never fixed and didn't have a response (fair enough- priorities) so anyone saying the same thing wouldn't be adding anything, and nobody knew they had a 30ish day deadline to object

(I don't intend for this to sound harsh, just as a disagreement! 🙂)

Edit: as an aside that might be helpful for people with an interest in this, Google's experimental Open Source Insights has an API. I wasn't aware of it until recently but it could very well resolve this entire conversation.

[gwatts]

I use the Dash doc viewer on my Mac which i find super useful for building a local index of all sorts of docs, Go included - Just found i couldn't install a new Go docset into it, presumably as it can no longer build an index from api.godoc.org.

Would be nice to point the author towards an alternate index if this one isn't returning as the usefulness of Dash is greatly diminished for me without having rapid access to the docs of Go packages i use frequently.

[AlekSi]

Dash 6.3.1 now relies on the web scraping. It works, but API would be better.

[hyangah]

FYI deps.dev launched a new API service.

https://docs.deps.dev/api/v3alpha/

Its GetPackage, GetVersion, GetDependencies may be useful for users who need the list of versions, license info, and dependency info. I think it also provides vulnerability info as well. (cc @adg)

This does not cover the /search, /packages, /importers endpoints of the old gddo though.
(OTOH, it's unclear to me what people want to see from /packages endpoint given the current volume of data)

[avamsi]

I was looking for an API to search for Go "commands" -- https://deps.dev/_/search/suggest?system=go&kind=package&q=axl (and then https://api.deps.dev/v3alpha/systems/go/packages/github.com%2Favamsi%2Faxl) kinda works (I don't mind that deps.dev/_/search is hacky and potentially unstable), but pkg.go.dev also annotates the commands as such (see https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=axl, for example), so it's easy to tell them apart from vanilla libraries.

[sfblackl-intel]

https://docs.deps.dev/api/v3alpha/

We are using that...but realized that for Go packages in particular, there is no publish date...which led me to this thread. My main real ask is that publish date be included for Go packages...otherwise my solution appears to be to call something like this for each package/version (https://proxy.golang.org/<module>/@v/v1.9.0.info).

[dvob]

I also used api.godoc.org for my project https://github.com/dvob/go-project-usage/
To obtain the importers I now scrape https://pkg.go.dev/%s?tab=importedby (see https://github.com/dvob/go-project-usage/blob/72c5625c361b7e81fa2d1a35591c30830dc1164f/main.go#L134).
Unfortunately this is prone to break (e.g if CSS class name changes) and for packages with many importers it only returns 20k packages.

[xnuinside]

I want to woke up this tread. https://docs.deps.dev/ that is referencing before does not contain any information about standard libraries packages (https://pkg.go.dev/std). Answering on why and who will use API: all researchers & data miners that needed to analyze open source packages (huge set of tools for code analyzes, code efficiency & vulnerabilities) (and it is only from my work-domain, I believe that there are more purposes) - we need information about package when we resolve vulnerabilities, when we investigate how languages growth, that dynamic on them, we need this information to track new releases & fixes & etc. Mostly all popular ecosystems for languages (maven, pypi, crates, conan, conda, etc) & operation systems like linux provide API to get this information - it could be DB dump, it could be REST API, github repo, anything, it could be huge csv files - any format will be better when scraping website.

UPD: also, there is no ANY informations about packages (subpackages?) inside repo, for example, https://pkg.go.dev/vuln/GO-2021-0073 for Affected Package - github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs/lfsapi on deps.dev info only about 'root' packages like github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs and you cannot find any information that packages inside

[mark-pictor-csec]

Another use for the API would be to check if any versions of a module are retracted. Right now the only way I see to get that info is pretty terrible - I must GET pkgs.go.dev/path/to/pkg/?tab=versions, and search the html for the word retracted. If it's there then I get to parse the html and figure out which version(s) are so marked.

People at my company are very thankful that go vulnerabilities usually include affected symbols (example), as it allows us to report to customers whether they're actually using a vulnerable function with far better accuracy.

So while vuln reports are much better in go, for retractions we must parse a web page and hope the html doesn't change. This feels like a real step back.

I hope an API can be prioritized.