## Getting Started

The easiest way to get started with Octokit is to use a plain `GitHubClient`:

```
var client = new GitHubClient(new ProductHeaderValue("my-cool-app"));
```

This will let you access unauthenticated GitHub APIs, but you will be subject to rate limiting (you can read more about this [here](https://developer.github.com/v3/#rate-limiting)).

But why do you need this `ProductHeaderValue` value?

The API will reject you if you don't provide a `User-Agent` header (more details [here](https://developer.github.com/v3/#user-agent-required)). This is also to identify applications that are accessing the API and enable GitHub to contact the application author if there are problems. So pick a name that stands out!

### Authenticated Access

If you want to access private repositories or perform actions on behalf of a user, you need to pass credentials to the client.

There are two options supported by the API - basic and OAuth authentication.

```
var basicAuth = new Credentials("username", "password"); // NOTE: not real credentials
client.Credentials = basicAuth;
```

```
var tokenAuth = new Credentials("token"); // NOTE: not real token
client.Credentials = tokenAuth;
```

It is **strongly recommended** to use the [OAuth Flow](https://github.com/octokit/octokit.net/blob/master/docs/oauth-flow.md) for interactions on behalf of a user, as this gives two significant benefits:

 - the application owner never needs to store a user's password
 - the token can be revoked by the user at a later date

When authenticated, you have 5000 requests per hour available. So this is the recommended approach for interacting with the API.

### Connecting to GitHub Enterprise

Octokit also supports connecting to GitHub Enterprise environments - just provide the URL to your GitHub Enterprise server when creating the client.

```
var ghe = new Uri("https://github.myenterprise.com/");
var client = new GitHubClient(new ProductHeaderValue("my-cool-app"), ghe);
```

### Get exploring

Once you've got that setup, the simplest thing to experiment with is fetching details about a specific user:

```
var user = await client.User.Get("shiftkey");
Console.WriteLine("{0} has {1} public repositories - go check out their profile at {2}",
	user.Name,
	user.PublicRepos,
	user.Url);
```

If you've authenticated as a given user, you can query their details directly:

```
var user = await client.User.Current();
```