It always amuses me when the API link in the footer floats up as a submission every few years.
It's almost as if a color scheme of grey on grey makes features hard to notice.
Hacker News Official API
111–120 of 138 posts
Re: Hacker News Official API
#112What interesting projects could be built/are built on top of this?
I've been hacking on a read-only client in Godot for a while. I don't know if that's "interesting" though.
Re: Hacker News Official API
#113In response to people's complaints about the usability of the HN Firebase API: yes. We're going to eventually have a new API that returns a simple JSON version of any HN URL. At that point we'll phase out the Firebase API, with a generous deprecation period. I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts about what a generous deprecation period might be.
Honestly, it would be nice if the Firebase API were updated. You could even build the former on the latter, so JSON urls pull from the API.
Just being able to get an entire thread in a single request alone, and filter queries would make things much easier.
Re: Hacker News Official API
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I built a graphql API for HN for this reason. It will let you fetch all comments, users, and posts in a single request. https://hngraphql.fly.dev/graphql
Can you share the code behind the API?
Re: Hacker News Official API
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure they do, what they are saying is that the data format is just the raw format they use in memory after loading it from a database.
No they don’t. This forum was created as a MVP of a webapp using PG’s Arc Lisp. All user and comment data are stored as tables serialized to text files or in memory. You can find an old version of the code at http://arclanguage.org
So they do use a database? In the form of text files. The comment I was responding to was edited, and before it was asking if they stored everything in memory and how they handled reboots.
Re: Hacker News Official API
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably 3rd party clients that offer quality of life / usability improvements over the website. E.g. I use Hackers [1][2] because it is much easier to read stories on mobile and supports dark mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't support commenting or downvoting (yet?) [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hackers-for-hacker-news/id6035... [2] https://github.com/weiran/Hackers
I am the developer of HACK (available on iOS, Android and MacOS) which allows commenting, upvoting, downvoting, favoriting, submitting new posts and also supports push notifications for replies. It is the top Hacker News client in the App Store. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...
Thank you! I'll give it a download
Re: Hacker News Official API
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably 3rd party clients that offer quality of life / usability improvements over the website. E.g. I use Hackers [1][2] because it is much easier to read stories on mobile and supports dark mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't support commenting or downvoting (yet?) [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hackers-for-hacker-news/id6035... [2] https://github.com/weiran/Hackers
I am the developer of HACK (available on iOS, Android and MacOS) which allows commenting, upvoting, downvoting, favoriting, submitting new posts and also supports push notifications for replies. It is the top Hacker News client in the App Store. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...
Writing this reply with HACK, thanks for the app! If you are comfortable with it, could you share rough revenue estimate for the app of such popularity? How do you approach promoting such a specific app?
Re: Hacker News Official API
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're arguing here as if there is an argument to be had. I'm trying to help you understand that there is no such argument. Your claims have been considered and rejected hundreds of times over the last 10 years. It'd behoove you to consult the search bar below and read some of those old discussions. This isn't a case where the community made a rash decision and just doesn't realize how problematic it is; you're talki…
Just to be clear, intentionally not responding, since you repeatedly in my opinion ignored my points and contrary to your claims, did not engage me out of intellectual curiosity.
I think tptacek is saying something meaningful in suggesting that there's already a long history to this discussion. Personally I disagree that the soul of HN is about curiosity. If you removed all the explicit comments about curiosity and showed the site to new tech people, I don't think there would be consensus on curiosity. If you showed a bunch of people the Rust subreddit, there would be consensus that it's soul is Rust.
Personally I see this site as the Reddit of tech with 20% of its flavor coming from YC companies. That is how it behaves, as opposed what moderators say the site is about.
Re: Hacker News Official API
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to be clear, intentionally not responding, since you repeatedly in my opinion ignored my points and contrary to your claims, did not engage me out of intellectual curiosity.
I think tptacek is saying something meaningful in suggesting that there's already a long history to this discussion. Personally I disagree that the soul of HN is about curiosity. If you removed all the explicit comments about curiosity and showed the site to new tech people, I don't think there would be consensus on curiosity. If you showed a bunch of people the Rust subreddit, there would be consensus that it's soul…
'curious conversation' is a much loftier, woolier and syntheticier goal than 'Rust' and HN strives towards it imperfectly. The measure, though, is 'does this or that change bring us closer to it' not 'can people unfamiliar with the site achieve mindmeld with dang by staring at the front page'.
Re: Hacker News Official API
#120In response to people's complaints about the usability of the HN Firebase API: yes. We're going to eventually have a new API that returns a simple JSON version of any HN URL. At that point we'll phase out the Firebase API, with a generous deprecation period. I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts about what a generous deprecation period might be.
The great thing about the Firebase API is that it's live, so you can subscribe to updates to a post/comment/profile and see them as they're made (no polling, just websockets). I'd hope any future version would retain this feature. I'm reluctant to lose it as I'm about to release a browser extension that relies on it pretty heavily :) [Edit]: this feature is undocumented in the link above, but it's a standard feature…
Hmm. I'm sorry but I can't promise that. It isn't part of the HN API, though I can understand why people use it since Firebase offers it.