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HackerNews logoAPI

Documentation and Samples for the Official HN API

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Top Related Projects

Some of the hidden norms about Hacker News not otherwise covered in the Guidelines and the FAQ.

Quick Overview

The HackerNews/API repository provides documentation for the official Hacker News API. It allows developers to access and interact with Hacker News data programmatically, including stories, comments, and user information. This API is RESTful and returns JSON responses.

Pros

  • Free and open access to Hacker News data
  • Well-documented with clear endpoints and response formats
  • Supports real-time updates through Firebase
  • No authentication required for most endpoints

Cons

  • Rate limiting may apply (not explicitly stated in documentation)
  • Limited search functionality
  • No official client libraries provided
  • Some data may be delayed or inconsistent due to caching

Code Examples

Since this is an API documentation repository and not a code library, there are no code examples to provide. However, developers can use standard HTTP libraries in their preferred programming language to interact with the API.

Getting Started

To start using the Hacker News API, follow these steps:

  1. Review the API documentation at https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  2. Choose an endpoint to interact with (e.g., /v0/item/{id}.json for item details)
  3. Make HTTP GET requests to the desired endpoints using your preferred programming language and HTTP library
  4. Parse the JSON responses to extract the required data

Example using curl to fetch the top stories:

curl https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json

This will return an array of story IDs, which you can then use to fetch individual story details.

Competitor Comparisons

Some of the hidden norms about Hacker News not otherwise covered in the Guidelines and the FAQ.

Pros of hacker-news-undocumented

  • Provides insights into undocumented features and endpoints of the Hacker News API
  • Offers examples and explanations for advanced usage and hidden functionalities
  • Regularly updated with community contributions and discoveries

Cons of hacker-news-undocumented

  • Not officially supported or endorsed by Hacker News
  • May contain information that becomes outdated if the official API changes
  • Lacks the comprehensive documentation and stability of the official API

Code Comparison

hacker-news-undocumented:

import requests

# Fetch all items by a specific user
user_items = requests.get(f"https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/{username}/submitted.json").json()

API:

import requests

# Fetch top stories
top_stories = requests.get("https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json").json()

The hacker-news-undocumented example showcases a less-known endpoint for fetching all items submitted by a specific user, while the API example demonstrates a standard endpoint for retrieving top stories.

Both repositories serve different purposes: API provides official documentation and endpoints, while hacker-news-undocumented explores additional features and undocumented aspects of the Hacker News API. Users should consider their specific needs and the trade-offs between official support and extended functionality when choosing between these resources.

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README

Hacker News API

Overview

In partnership with Firebase, we're making the public Hacker News data available in near real time. Firebase enables easy access from Android, iOS and the web. Servers aren't left out.

If you can use one of the many Firebase client libraries, you really should. The libraries handle networking efficiently and can raise events when things change. Be sure to check them out.

Please email api@ycombinator.com if you find any bugs.

URI and Versioning

We hope to improve the API over time. The changes won't always be backward compatible, so we're going to use versioning. This first iteration will have URIs prefixed with https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/ and is structured as described below. There is currently no rate limit.

For versioning purposes, only removal of a non-optional field or alteration of an existing field will be considered incompatible changes. Clients should gracefully handle additional fields they don't expect, and simply ignore them.

Design

The v0 API is essentially a dump of our in-memory data structures. We know, what works great locally in memory isn't so hot over the network. Many of the awkward things are just the way HN works internally. Want to know the total number of comments on an article? Traverse the tree and count. Want to know the children of an item? Load the item and get their IDs, then load them. The newest page? Starts at item maxid and walks backward, keeping only the top level stories. Same for Ask, Show, etc.

I'm not saying this to defend it - It's not the ideal public API, but it's the one we could release in the time we had. While awkward, it's possible to implement most of HN using it.

Items

Stories, comments, jobs, Ask HNs and even polls are just items. They're identified by their ids, which are unique integers, and live under /v0/item/<id>.

All items have some of the following properties, with required properties in bold:

FieldDescription
idThe item's unique id.
deletedtrue if the item is deleted.
typeThe type of item. One of "job", "story", "comment", "poll", or "pollopt".
byThe username of the item's author.
timeCreation date of the item, in Unix Time.
textThe comment, story or poll text. HTML.
deadtrue if the item is dead.
parentThe comment's parent: either another comment or the relevant story.
pollThe pollopt's associated poll.
kidsThe ids of the item's comments, in ranked display order.
urlThe URL of the story.
scoreThe story's score, or the votes for a pollopt.
titleThe title of the story, poll or job. HTML.
partsA list of related pollopts, in display order.
descendantsIn the case of stories or polls, the total comment count.

For example, a story: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/8863.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "dhouston",
  "descendants" : 71,
  "id" : 8863,
  "kids" : [ 8952, 9224, 8917, 8884, 8887, 8943, 8869, 8958, 9005, 9671, 8940, 9067, 8908, 9055, 8865, 8881, 8872, 8873, 8955, 10403, 8903, 8928, 9125, 8998, 8901, 8902, 8907, 8894, 8878, 8870, 8980, 8934, 8876 ],
  "score" : 111,
  "time" : 1175714200,
  "title" : "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive",
  "type" : "story",
  "url" : "http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html"
}

comment: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "norvig",
  "id" : 2921983,
  "kids" : [ 2922097, 2922429, 2924562, 2922709, 2922573, 2922140, 2922141 ],
  "parent" : 2921506,
  "text" : "Aw shucks, guys ... you make me blush with your compliments.<p>Tell you what, Ill make a deal: I'll keep writing if you keep reading. K?",
  "time" : 1314211127,
  "type" : "comment"
}

ask: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/121003.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "tel",
  "descendants" : 16,
  "id" : 121003,
  "kids" : [ 121016, 121109, 121168 ],
  "score" : 25,
  "text" : "<i>or</i> HN: the Next Iteration<p>I get the impression that with Arc being released a lot of people who never had time for HN before are suddenly dropping in more often. (PG: what are the numbers on this? I'm envisioning a spike.)<p>Not to say that isn't great, but I'm wary of Diggification. Between links comparing programming to sex and a flurry of gratuitous, ostentatious  adjectives in the headlines it's a bit concerning.<p>80% of the stuff that makes the front page is still pretty awesome, but what's in place to keep the signal/noise ratio high? Does the HN model still work as the community scales? What's in store for (++ HN)?",
  "time" : 1203647620,
  "title" : "Ask HN: The Arc Effect",
  "type" : "story"
}

job: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/192327.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "justin",
  "id" : 192327,
  "score" : 6,
  "text" : "Justin.tv is the biggest live video site online. We serve hundreds of thousands of video streams a day, and have supported up to 50k live concurrent viewers. Our site is growing every week, and we just added a 10 gbps line to our colo. Our unique visitors are up 900% since January.<p>There are a lot of pieces that fit together to make Justin.tv work: our video cluster, IRC server, our web app, and our monitoring and search services, to name a few. A lot of our website is dependent on Flash, and we're looking for talented Flash Engineers who know AS2 and AS3 very well who want to be leaders in the development of our Flash.<p>Responsibilities<p><pre><code>    * Contribute to product design and implementation discussions\n    * Implement projects from the idea phase to production\n    * Test and iterate code before and after production release \n</code></pre>\nQualifications<p><pre><code>    * You should know AS2, AS3, and maybe a little be of Flex.\n    * Experience building web applications.\n    * A strong desire to work on website with passionate users and ideas for how to improve it.\n    * Experience hacking video streams, python, Twisted or rails all a plus.\n</code></pre>\nWhile we're growing rapidly, Justin.tv is still a small, technology focused company, built by hackers for hackers. Seven of our ten person team are engineers or designers. We believe in rapid development, and push out new code releases every week. We're based in a beautiful office in the SOMA district of SF, one block from the caltrain station. If you want a fun job hacking on code that will touch a lot of people, JTV is for you.<p>Note: You must be physically present in SF to work for JTV. Completing the technical problem at <a href=\"http://www.justin.tv/problems/bml\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.justin.tv/problems/bml</a> will go a long way with us. Cheers!",
  "time" : 1210981217,
  "title" : "Justin.tv is looking for a Lead Flash Engineer!",
  "type" : "job",
  "url" : ""
}

poll: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/126809.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "pg",
  "descendants" : 54,
  "id" : 126809,
  "kids" : [ 126822, 126823, 126993, 126824, 126934, 127411, 126888, 127681, 126818, 126816, 126854, 127095, 126861, 127313, 127299, 126859, 126852, 126882, 126832, 127072, 127217, 126889, 127535, 126917, 126875 ],
  "parts" : [ 126810, 126811, 126812 ],
  "score" : 46,
  "text" : "",
  "time" : 1204403652,
  "title" : "Poll: What would happen if News.YC had explicit support for polls?",
  "type" : "poll"
}

and one of its parts: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/160705.json?print=pretty

{
  "by" : "pg",
  "id" : 160705,
  "poll" : 160704,
  "score" : 335,
  "text" : "Yes, ban them; I'm tired of seeing Valleywag stories on News.YC.",
  "time" : 1207886576,
  "type" : "pollopt"
}

Users

Users are identified by case-sensitive ids, and live under /v0/user/. Only users that have public activity (comments or story submissions) on the site are available through the API.

FieldDescription
idThe user's unique username. Case-sensitive. Required.
createdCreation date of the user, in Unix Time.
karmaThe user's karma.
aboutThe user's optional self-description. HTML.
submittedList of the user's stories, polls and comments.

For example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/jl.json?print=pretty

{
  "about" : "This is a test",
  "created" : 1173923446,
  "id" : "jl",
  "karma" : 2937,
  "submitted" : [ 8265435, 8168423, 8090946, 8090326, 7699907, 7637962, 7596179, 7596163, 7594569, 7562135, 7562111, 7494708, 7494171, 7488093, 7444860, 7327817, 7280290, 7278694, 7097557, 7097546, 7097254, 7052857, 7039484, 6987273, 6649999, 6649706, 6629560, 6609127, 6327951, 6225810, 6111999, 5580079, 5112008, 4907948, 4901821, 4700469, 4678919, 3779193, 3711380, 3701405, 3627981, 3473004, 3473000, 3457006, 3422158, 3136701, 2943046, 2794646, 2482737, 2425640, 2411925, 2408077, 2407992, 2407940, 2278689, 2220295, 2144918, 2144852, 1875323, 1875295, 1857397, 1839737, 1809010, 1788048, 1780681, 1721745, 1676227, 1654023, 1651449, 1641019, 1631985, 1618759, 1522978, 1499641, 1441290, 1440993, 1436440, 1430510, 1430208, 1385525, 1384917, 1370453, 1346118, 1309968, 1305415, 1305037, 1276771, 1270981, 1233287, 1211456, 1210688, 1210682, 1194189, 1193914, 1191653, 1190766, 1190319, 1189925, 1188455, 1188177, 1185884, 1165649, 1164314, 1160048, 1159156, 1158865, 1150900, 1115326, 933897, 924482, 923918, 922804, 922280, 922168, 920332, 919803, 917871, 912867, 910426, 902506, 891171, 807902, 806254, 796618, 786286, 764412, 764325, 642566, 642564, 587821, 575744, 547504, 532055, 521067, 492164, 491979, 383935, 383933, 383930, 383927, 375462, 263479, 258389, 250751, 245140, 243472, 237445, 229393, 226797, 225536, 225483, 225426, 221084, 213940, 213342, 211238, 210099, 210007, 209913, 209908, 209904, 209903, 170904, 165850, 161566, 158388, 158305, 158294, 156235, 151097, 148566, 146948, 136968, 134656, 133455, 129765, 126740, 122101, 122100, 120867, 120492, 115999, 114492, 114304, 111730, 110980, 110451, 108420, 107165, 105150, 104735, 103188, 103187, 99902, 99282, 99122, 98972, 98417, 98416, 98231, 96007, 96005, 95623, 95487, 95475, 95471, 95467, 95326, 95322, 94952, 94681, 94679, 94678, 94420, 94419, 94393, 94149, 94008, 93490, 93489, 92944, 92247, 91713, 90162, 90091, 89844, 89678, 89498, 86953, 86109, 85244, 85195, 85194, 85193, 85192, 84955, 84629, 83902, 82918, 76393, 68677, 61565, 60542, 47745, 47744, 41098, 39153, 38678, 37741, 33469, 12897, 6746, 5252, 4752, 4586, 4289 ]
}

Live Data

The coolest part of Firebase is its support for change notifications. While you can subscribe to individual items and profiles, you'll need to use the following to observe front page ranking, new items, and new profiles.

Max Item ID

The current largest item id is at /v0/maxitem. You can walk backward from here to discover all items.

Example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/maxitem.json?print=pretty

9130260

New, Top and Best Stories

Up to 500 top and new stories are at /v0/topstories (also contains jobs) and /v0/newstories. Best stories are at /v0/beststories.

Example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json?print=pretty

[ 9129911, 9129199, 9127761, 9128141, 9128264, 9127792, 9129248, 9127092, 9128367, ..., 9038733 ]

Ask, Show and Job Stories

Up to 200 of the latest Ask HN, Show HN, and Job stories are at /v0/askstories, /v0/showstories, and /v0/jobstories.

Example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/askstories.json?print=pretty

[ 9127232, 9128437, 9130049, 9130144, 9130064, 9130028, 9129409, 9127243, 9128571, ..., 9120990 ]

Changed Items and Profiles

The item and profile changes are at /v0/updates.

Example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/updates.json?print=pretty

{
  "items" : [ 8423305, 8420805, 8423379, 8422504, 8423178, 8423336, 8422717, 8417484, 8423378, 8423238, 8423353, 8422395, 8423072, 8423044, 8423344, 8423374, 8423015, 8422428, 8423377, 8420444, 8423300, 8422633, 8422599, 8422408, 8422928, 8394339, 8421900, 8420902, 8422087 ],
  "profiles" : [ "thefox", "mdda", "plinkplonk", "GBond", "rqebmm", "neom", "arram", "mcmancini", "metachris", "DubiousPusher", "dochtman", "kstrauser", "biren34", "foobarqux", "mkehrt", "nathanm412", "wmblaettler", "JoeAnzalone", "rcconf", "johndbritton", "msie", "cktsai", "27182818284", "kevinskii", "wildwood", "mcherm", "naiyt", "matthewmcg", "joelhaus", "tshtf", "MrZongle2", "Bogdanp" ]
}