Extract GitHub Repo Name from URL using JavaScript

Here’s a handy function that will extract the repo path from a valid GitHub URL:

export function extractGitHubRepoPath(url) {
  if (!url) return null;
  const match = url.match(
    /^https?:\/\/(www\.)?github.com\/(?<owner>[\w.-]+)\/(?<name>[\w.-]+)/
  );
  if (!match || !(match.groups?.owner && match.groups?.name)) return null;
  return `${match.groups.owner}/${match.groups.name}`;
}

Here we’re using a named capture group to independently retrieve the owner and name of a particular repo. We can then more easily ensure we have both, and return null if not.

It accounts for the following conditions:

• A falsey value for url (returns null)
• Using an insecure URL (http and not https)
• Including or omitting www subdomain (works with github.com and www.github.com)
• Any number of URL fragments following the repo path — e.g. https://github.com/seancdavis/seancdavis-com/blob/main/www/src/pages/index.md would return seancdavis/seancdavis-com
• Invalid URLs — anything that doesn't match the pattern, including having an owner and name match, returns null