Show HN: I developed a native macOS Hacker News client

https://f-droid.org/is/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

I’m more than happy to get feature requests though — read/unread indication and favorites are something that I would definitely try implementing. Notifications are a bit harder because it would require polling HN — I’ll be thinking on it.

  function hackernews() {
    if (document.location.toString().indexOf('news.ycombinator') === -1) return;
    document.querySelector('#hnmain td').style = 'background-color: #55b6f2;';
    var i = 0;
    function render(user, html) {
      const div = document.createElement('div');
      let style = 'cursor: text;overflow-y: scroll; height: 39px;position: absolute;border: 1px dotted #828282;width: 250px;margin-left: 250px;margin-top: -34px;background-color: #f6f6ef;';
      div.innerHTML = html;
      const date = div.querySelectorAll('tr')[5].querySelectorAll('td')[1].innerHTML.split(', ')[1];
      const karma = div.querySelectorAll('tr')[6].querySelectorAll('td')[1].innerHTML;
      const about = div.querySelectorAll('tr')[7].querySelectorAll('td')[1].innerHTML;
      if (about.length = document.querySelectorAll('.default .comhead').length) return;
      const user = document.querySelectorAll('.default .comhead')[i++];
      if (!user) return next();
      const username = user.querySelector('a').href;
      if (username.indexOf('soheil') !== -1) return next();
      
      const html = localStorage.getItem(username);
      if (html) {
        render(user, html);
        next();
        return;
      }
      fetch(username)
      .then(res => res.text())
      .then(res => {
        localStorage.setItem(username, res);
        render(user, res);
        setTimeout(next, 3000);
      });
    }
    next();
  }

I’m using two different APIs — the inefficient API that requires you querying in a tree fashion is the HN official API[0], but there’s also the Algolia API[1], which is much faster and gives a much sensible data shape. I also do actually fetch the HN website as well — it’s needed for account/voting features. With these sources, it’s much faster than a usual client that gets it’s data from the official API.

> The HN website I think is pretty ideal for the type of content its displaying, a native app doesn't give you much over having a HN tab open.

I guess it’s a bit of difference on how one uses HN? I didn’t like HN tabs being mixed with other work—related tabs. I felt that having an app would be a perfect solution to me, but YMMV I guess.

> The only benefit I see from a native app is the ability to save articles and comments for offline reading

I guess that’s one more feature that I should add to my backlog :)

[0]: https://github.com/HackerNews/API

[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/api