[airlocksoftware]

This... is cool, but also kinda sucks for me. I've invested dozens of hours into writing an extremely complicated scraper for my Android version of HN.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...

The newest version (still under development, probably a month or two from release) adds support for displaying polls, linking to subthreads, and full write support (voting, commenting, submitting, etc). I'm fine with switching to a new API (Square's Retrofit will make it super easy to switch), but without submitting, commenting, and upvote support I have to disable a bunch of features I worked really hard on. Also it would've been cool to know this was coming about 3 months ago so I didn't waste my time.

Anyways, quick question on how it works -- when I query for the list of top stories

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

it just returns a list of ids. Do I have to make a separate request for each story

https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/8863.json?print=p...)

to assemble them into a list for the front page, or am I missing something?

[dang]

I'm sorry you just invested a lot of time in scraping. I know from experience what a pain that is. We said several times that the API was coming, and I've made it clear to anyone who asked, but there's just no way to reach everybody. All: in the future, please get answers to questions like this by emailing [e-mail].

Re write access and logged-in access, if that turns out to be how people want to use the API, that's the direction we'll go. But we think it's important to launch an initial release and develop it based on feedback. There are many other use cases for this data besides building a full-featured client: analyzing history, providing notifications, and so on. It will be fascinating to see what people build!

[airlocksoftware]

I'm not blaming you. It just feels bad, you know? I'll definitely email you in the future about stuff like this. And don't get me wrong, it will be great to be able to throw out the cruft that comes along with parsing the current layout. The app is engineered to be able to drop in a new API pretty quick since I thought something like this would happen eventually.

It would help me out a lot if the current front end would live on under oldnews.ycombinator.com like that until the new API has write access, though. I think it's pretty cool to be able to be reading an article somewhere else, click "Share" in Android and have "Submit to HN" pop up in the results.

[dionidium]

This... is cool, but also kinda sucks for me. I've invested dozens of hours into writing an extremely complicated scraper for my Android version of HN.

This definitely does suck. I feel your pain. But it's also part of the package of scraping websites. You go in knowing that it could break at any time.

[airlocksoftware]

Oh, I'm well aware. I've had to push many quick fixes when some field gets renamed, etc. It's really not the API change that bothers me, more the lack of features. But hopefully they can add those things soon and I can re-enable them down the road.

[kogir]

Yes. While with HTTP pipelining you can request them all over a single TCP connection using a single SSL session, you will need to make an HTTP request for each item you want.

If you're on a supported platform, the Firebase SDKs handle all this efficiently and can even provide real-time change notifications.

[davideast]

[Firebase Employee]

If you use the SDKs, we handle the connection and all of the data is sent over a reused full duplex socket rather than individual requests. https://www.firebase.com/docs/android/, https://www.firebase.com/docs/ios/, https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/

[thegeomaster]

I'm also currently writing a scraper[1] for the HN frontpage (for my WIP Hacker News redesign), and while there's a limited Algolia API available, it doesn't do much good if users can't post comments, upvote etc. Same goes for the official one now.

So, @anyone involved with the API project, can you give us an estimate on when will the OAuth-based user-specific API be rolled out? I'm fining with pausing my efforts until then, if it's going to be soon, in order to go a less complex and error-prone path.

[1]: https://github.com/geomaster/hnop/blob/master/backend/src/hn...

[kogir]

It's not going to be soon :(

[sararob]

[Firebase Dev Advocate] @airlocksoftware - Yes, you should make separate requests for each story. You can attach a listener to the topstories node (https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/guide/retrieving-data.html...) and when that’s triggered, you can make a request for the data on each story. Using the Firebase SDK, each request will get made using the same connection. I'd recommend using our SDK instead of the REST API so you don't have to worry about managing your own connections and retries.

[ossama]

Here's an example showing all topstories and updating in realtime. Obviously, in JS, but the other Firebase SDKs are similar: http://jsfiddle.net/firebase/96voj1xh/

[tudborg]

Just wanted to drop a comment on the awesomeness of your app. Hacker News 2 is by far the best Hacker News app, not just on Android, but on all mobile platforms i've tried (so, iOS, Android and Windows Phone) Awesome work you are doing.

[TheAlchemist]

I did use your app for learning purposes - I studied the code quite a lot when learning Android. Thanks for good job !

[deft]

Yeah, I like it a lot, but I've put tons of time into my scraper for Reader YC (https://github.com/krruzic/Reader-YC). I support everything but polls currently. This api is nice but my scraper actually supports more... No option to get Show HN, Ask HN or New afaik. Still glad this is out!

[tsenkov]

Exactly. Is this really the case, or it just isn't documented? I've send an email to [e-mail] about that and hopefuly, I will be able to shed some light on this, later. I will write as soon as I get a response. (assuming someone responds)

[jkimmel]

just wanted to let you know that I love your application!

[airlocksoftware]

Thanks! I think you'll like the new version whenever it gets finished :)

[cJ0th]

I, for one, was just thinking about writing a scraper...

Thanks very much guys!

[dimillian]

This is a big question for me too. It sounds like you need to fetch every id from the REST API. I need to test the iOS (and you Android) SDK.

[hokkos]

I remember it was announced a few month ago.

[kolev]

Nice app! Is login broken though?

[airlocksoftware]

Oh, thanks for the reminder. I fixed it a few days ago and did a staged rollout but forgot to push it to everyone. I've done that so it should update for you soon.

[piyush_soni]

So why, in the first place, would I want another mobile app rather than just opening the fully functional website (which is pretty simple & basic already) on my mobile browser?

[airlocksoftware]

Because it can be better designed, use common design / navigation patterns of your mobile OS, notify you when you get a reply, change the text size, change the theme, have richer animations, and allow you to automatically share content from other applications directly to HN?

[squeaky-clean]

Because the website looks terrible on a phone/small screen. I visit ihackernews.com more often than I actually visit news.ycombinator.com

[pbhjpbhj]

Ideally those in charge of HN would have simply employed someone - they had offers starting at free I gather from previous threads - to make HN mobile friendly. Failing that apps are just patching the original site. I too decry this form of progress (replacing web access with apps that only fix the borked site) but it's not hard to see why people should want that.

[arjie]

Mobile websites work poorly on my Moto G. Apps are smooth and pleasant to use.

[josephlord]

Potentially offline access to comments.

[Raphael]

The API can be used to create a mobile friendly site, since the official one is not for some odd reason.