Building a GitLab Merge Request Analyzer: The Why and How (Part 1)

GitLabTypeScriptCode AnalysisAutomationCode Reviews

Last month, I was drowning in code reviews. As a lead developer at my company, I review about 20-30 merge requests daily. While GitLab's interface is great, I needed more - I wanted to analyze patterns, track changes over time, and most importantly, save my sanity.

That's when I decided to build gitlab-mr-extractor, a TypeScript library that helps you extract and analyze merge request data. In this series, I'll walk you through why I built it, how it works, and how you can use it to make your code review process better.

The Problem

Let me paint you a picture of my typical day before building this tool:

  1. Open GitLab
  2. Click through 20+ merge requests
  3. Try to remember which ones had similar patterns
  4. Manually track recurring issues
  5. Repeat the next day

It was... not fun 🤦‍♂️

I needed answers to questions like:

  • Which files are changed most often?
  • What types of changes are we making?
  • Are we following our coding patterns?
  • How can I automate some of these reviews?

The Solution

Enter gitlab-mr-extractor. At its core, it's a simple idea:

  1. Fetch merge request data from GitLab
  2. Parse the diffs and changes
  3. Save them in a format that's easy to analyze
  4. Generate reports that actually make sense

Here's a quick example of what it can do:

 
tsx
import { GitLabMergeRequestExtractor } from 'gitlab-mr-extractor'

const extractor = new GitLabMergeRequestExtractor({
	baseUrl: 'https://gitlab.com',

	privateToken: process.env.GITLAB_TOKEN,

	projectId: 'your-project-id',
})

const mergeRequests = await extractor.extractMergeRequests()

This simple piece of code gets you all the merge request data, including:

  • Complete diff information
  • Change patterns
  • File modifications
  • Author details
  • Timestamps

Why TypeScript?

I chose TypeScript for a few reasons:

  1. Type safety (duh!)
  2. Better IDE support
  3. Easier to maintain
  4. Great for parsing complex data structures

Plus, the GitLab API responses are pretty complex. Having proper types makes it much easier to work with the data.

What's Next?

In Part 2 of this series, we'll dive deep into:

  • The architecture of the library
  • How the diff parser works (it's pretty neat!)
  • Handling GitLab's API pagination
  • Error handling patterns that won't make you cry

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we'll get our hands dirty with some actual code!

This is Part 1 of a multi-part series on building and using gitlab-mr-extractor. Continue to Part 2: Deep Dive into the Code