GitHub - Amazon Kendra
Supported featuresPrerequisitesConnection instructionsLearn more

GitHub

GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development providing code storage and management services with version control. You can use Amazon Kendra to index your GitHub Enterprise Cloud (SaaS) and GitHub Enterprise Server (On Prem) repository files, issue and pull requests, issue and pull request comments, and issue and pull request comment attachments. You can also choose to include or exclude certain files.

Note

Amazon Kendra now supports an upgraded GitHub connector.

The console has been automatically upgraded for you. Any new connectors you create in the console will use the upgraded architecture. If you use the API, you must now use the TemplateConfiguration object instead of the GitHubConfiguration object to configure your connector.

Connectors configured using the older console and API architecture will continue to function as configured. However, you won’t be able to edit or update them. If you want to edit or update your connector configuration, you must create a new connector.

We recommended migrating your connector workflow to the upgraded version. Support for connectors configured using the older architecture is scheduled to end by June 2024.

You can connect Amazon Kendra to your GitHub data source using the Amazon Kendra console and the TemplateConfiguration API.

For troubleshooting your Amazon Kendra GitHub data source connector, see Troubleshooting data sources.

Supported features

Amazon Kendra GitHub data source connector supports the following features:

  • Field mappings

  • User context filtering

  • User identity crawling

  • Inclusion/exclusion filters

  • Full and incremental content syncs

  • Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Prerequisites

Before you can use Amazon Kendra to index your GitHub data source, make these changes in your GitHub and AWS accounts.

In GitHub, make sure you have:

  • Created a GitHub user with administrative permissions to the GitHub organization.

  • Created a classic personal access token for authentication credentials. See GitHub documentation on creating a personal access token.

  • Recommended:Created an OAuth token for authentication credentials. Use OAuth token for better API throttle limits and connector performance. See GitHub documentation on OAuth authorization.

  • Noted the GitHub host URL for the type of GitHub service that you use. For example, the host URL for GitHub cloud could be https://api.github.com and the host URL for GitHub server could be https://on-prem-host-url/api/v3/.

  • Noted the name of your organization for GitHub the GitHub Enterprise Cloud (SaaS) account or GitHub Enterprise Server (on-premises) account you want to connect to. You can find your organization name by logging into GitHub desktop and selecting Your organizations under your profile picture dropdown.

  • Optional (server only): Generated a SSL certificate and copied the path to the certificate stored in an Amazon S3 bucket. You use this to connect to GitHub if you require a secure SSL connection. You can simply generate a self-signed X509 certificate on any computer using OpenSSL. For an example of using OpenSSL to create an X509 certificate, see Create and sign an X509 certificate.

  • Added the following permissions:

    For GitHub Enterprise Cloud (SaaS)

    • repo:status

    • public_repo

    • repo:invite

    • read:org

    • user:email

    • read:user

    For GitHub Enterprise Server (On Prem)

    • repo:status

    • public_repo

    • repo:invite

    • read:org

    • user:email

    • read:user

    • site_admin

  • Checked each document is unique in GitHub and across other data sources you plan to use for the same index. Each data source that you want to use for an index must not contain the same document across the data sources. Document IDs are global to an index and must be unique per index.

In your AWS account, make sure you have:

  • Created an Amazon Kendra index and, if using the API, noted the index ID.

  • Created an IAM role for your data source and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the IAM role.

    Note

    If you change your authentication type and credentials, you must update your IAM role to access the correct AWS Secrets Manager secret ID.

  • Stored your GitHub authentication credentials in an AWS Secrets Manager secret and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the secret.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

If you don’t have an existing IAM role or secret, you can use the console to create a new IAM role and Secrets Manager secret when you connect your GitHub data source to Amazon Kendra. If you are using the API, you must provide the ARN of an existing IAM role and Secrets Manager secret, and an index ID.

Connection instructions

To connect Amazon Kendra to your GitHub data source, you must provide the necessary details of your GitHub data source so that Amazon Kendra can access your data. If you have not yet configured GitHub for Amazon Kendra, see Prerequisites.

Console

To connect Amazon Kendra to GitHub

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Kendra console.

  2. From the left navigation pane, choose Indexes and then choose the index you want to use from the list of indexes.

    Note

    You can choose to configure or edit your User access control settings under Index settings.

  3. On the Getting started page, choose Add data source.

  4. On the Add data source page, choose GitHub connector, and then choose Add connector.

  5. On the Specify data source details page, enter the following information:

    1. In Name and description, for Data source name—Enter a name for your data source. You can include hyphens but not spaces.

    2. (Optional) Description—Enter an optional description for your data source.

    3. In Default language—Choose a language to filter your documents for the index. Unless you specify otherwise, the language defaults to English. Language specified in the document metadata overrides the selected language.

    4. In Tags, for Add new tag—Include optional tags to search and filter your resources or track your AWS costs.

    5. Choose Next.

  6. On the Define access and security page, enter the following information:

    1. GitHub source—Choose between GitHub Enterprise Cloud and GitHub Enterprise Server.

    2. GitHub host URL—Enter your GitHub host name.

    3. GitHub organization name—Enter your GitHub organization name. You can find your organization information in your GitHub account.

    4. Authorization—Turn on or off access control list (ACL) information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

    5. AWS Secrets Manager secret—Choose an existing secret or create a new Secrets Manager secret to store your GitHub authentication credentials. If you choose to create a new secret an AWS Secrets Manager secret window opens.

      1. Enter following information in the Create an AWS Secrets Manager secret window:

        1. Secret name—A name for your secret. The prefix ‘AmazonKendra-GitHub-’ is automatically added to your secret name.

        2. For GitHub token—Enter the authentication credential values you created in you GitHub account.

      2. Choose Save.

    6. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—You can choose to use a VPC. If so, you must add Subnets and VPC security groups.

    7. Identity crawler—Specify whether to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler. The identity crawler uses the access control list (ACL) information for your documents to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. If you have an ACL for your documents and choose to use your ACL, you can then also choose to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler to configure user context filtering of search results. Otherwise, if identity crawler is turned off, all documents can be publicly searched. If you want to use access control for your documents and identity crawler is turned off, you can alternatively use the PutPrincipalMapping API to upload user and group access information for user context filtering.

    8. IAM role—Choose an existing IAM role or create a new IAM role to access your repository credentials and index content.

      Note

      IAM roles used for indexes cannot be used for data sources. If you are unsure if an existing role is used for an index or FAQ, choose Create a new role to avoid errors.

    9. Choose Next.

  7. On the Configure sync settings page, enter the following information:

    1. Select repositories to crawl—Select between crawling All repositories or Select repositories.

      If you choose Select repositories, add names for the repositories in Name of repository and, optionally, the name of any specific branches in Name of branch.

    2. Content types—Select content types you want to include.

    3. Regex patterns—Regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain files. You can add up to 100 patterns.

    4. In Sync run schedule, for Frequency—How often Amazon Kendra will sync with your data source.

    5. Choose Next.

  8. Sync mode—Choose how you want to update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option.

    • Full sync: Freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • New, modified sync: Index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    • New, modified, deleted sync: Index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

  9. In Sync run schedule, for Frequency—How often Amazon Kendra will sync with your data source.

  10. Choose Next.

  11. On the Set field mappings page, enter the following information:

    1. For Repository, Respository Commit, Issue Document, Issue Comment, Issue Attachment, Pull Request Comment, Pull Request Document, Pull Request Attachment—Select from the Amazon Kendra generated default data source fields you want to map to your index.

    2. Add field—To add custom data source fields to create an index field name to map to and the field data type.

    3. Choose Next.

  12. On the Review and create page, check that the information you have entered is correct and then select Add data source. You can also choose to edit your information from this page. Your data source will appear on the Data sources page after the data source has been added successfully.

API

To connect Amazon Kendra to GitHub

You must specify a JSON of the data source schema using the TemplateConfiguration API. You must provide the following information:

  • Data source—Specify the data source type as GITHUB when you use the TemplateConfiguration JSON schema. Also specify the data source as TEMPLATE when you call the CreateDataSource API.

  • GitHub type—Specify the type as either SAAS or ON_PREMISE.

  • Host URL—Specify the GitHub host URL or API endpoint URL. For example, if you use GitHub SaaS/Enterprise Cloud, the host URL could be https://api.github.com, and for GitHub on-premises/Enterprise Server the host URL could be https://on-prem-host-url/api/v3/.

  • Organization name—Specify the name of the organization of the GitHub account. You can find your organization name by logging into GitHub desktop and selecting Your organizations under your profile picture dropdown.

  • Sync mode—Specify how Amazon Kendra should update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don’t choose full sync as your sync mode option. You can choose between:

    • FORCED_FULL_CRAWL to freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • FULL_CRAWL to index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    • CHANGE_LOG to index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

  • Identity crawler—Specify whether to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler. The identity crawler uses the access control list (ACL) information for your documents to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. If you have an ACL for your documents and choose to use your ACL, you can then also choose to turn on Amazon Kendra’s identity crawler to configure user context filtering of search results. Otherwise, if identity crawler is turned off, all documents can be publicly searched. If you want to use access control for your documents and identity crawler is turned off, you can alternatively use the PutPrincipalMapping API to upload user and group access information for user context filtering.

  • Secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN)—Provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an Secrets Manager secret that contains the authentication credentials for your GitHub account. The secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:

    {
    "personalToken": "token"
}
    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

  • IAM role—Specify RoleArn when you call CreateDataSource to provide an IAM role with permissions to access your Secrets Manager secret and to call the required public APIs for the GitHub connector and Amazon Kendra. For more information, see IAM roles for GitHub data sources.

You can also add the following optional features:

  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—Specify VpcConfiguration when you call CreateDataSource. For more information, see Configuring Amazon Kendra to use an Amazon VPC.

    Note

    If you use GitHub server, you must use an Amazon VPC to connect to your GitHub server.

  • Repository filter—Filter repositories by their name and branch names.

  • Document/content types—Specify whether to crawl repository documents, issues, issue comments, issue comment attachments, pull requests, pull request comments, pull request comment attachments.

  • Inclusion and exclusion filters—Specify whether to include or exclude certain files and folders.

    Note

    Most data sources use regular expression patterns, which are inclusion or exclusion patterns referred to as filters. If you specify an inclusion filter, only content that matches the inclusion filter is indexed. Any document that doesn’t match the inclusion filter isn’t indexed. If you specify an inclusion and exclusion filter, documents that match the exclusion filter are not indexed, even if they match the inclusion filter.

  • Access control list (ACL)—Specify whether to crawl ACL information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

  • Field mappings—Choose to map your GitHub data source fields to your Amazon Kendra index fields. You can include fields of documents, commits, issues, issue attachments, issue comments, pull requests, pull request attachments, pull request comments. For more information, see Mapping data source fields.

    Note

    The document body field or the document body equivalent for your documents is required in order for Amazon Kendra to search your documents. You must map your document body field name in your data source to the index field name _document_body. All other fields are optional.

For a list of other important JSON keys to configure, see GitHub template schema.

Learn more

To learn more about integrating Amazon Kendra with your GitHub data source, see: