Use Github search like a pro

Github is the largest open source community in the world. You can find thousands of code examples of your favorite programming languages on Github. I often search code examples on Github to understand how different people approach the similar problem. Let me show you how to effectively search code on Github.

Select Github code search

Use quotes for search queries with whitespace

"public function initialize"

Use language qualifier to search the code based on the language it's written in

belongsTo language:php

Use filename qualifier matches code files with a certain filename

runningInConsole language:php filename:InteractsWithApplication

Use in qualifier to restrict your search to the contents of the code file, the file path, or both

InteractsWithApplication in:file

InteractsWithApplication in:path,file

Use org or user qualifier to search the code in all the public repositories owned by a given organization or by a certain user

Application in:path org:laravel

Use the repo qualifier to search the code in a given repository

PluginConfig repo:laravel/vite-plugin

Use the path qualifier to search for source code that appears at a specific location in a repository

Laravel repo:laravel/laravel path:public

The extension qualifier matches code files with a certain file extension

index org:laravel in:path extension:js

You can remove certain results by prefixing any search qualifiers with a hyphen -

index org:laravel in:path extension:js -path:src

Github has a lot of other functions available to search for different types of information such as People, Issues, and projects. You can read the Github search docs to explore more.

If you do not prefer to remember and write all qualifiers for search manually, You can use the advanced Github search interface.

This article is inspired by Use Google like a pro by Marco Denic.