haxor

haxor

Unofficial Python wrapper for official Hacker News API.

Installation

pip install haxor

Usage

Import and initialization:

from hackernews import HackerNews
hn = HackerNews()

Items

Stories, comments, jobs, Ask HNs and even polls are just items with unique item id.

To query item information by id:

item = hn.get_item(8863)
# >>> item.title
# 'My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive'
# >>> item.item_type
# 'story'
# >>> item.kids
# [ 8952, 9224, 8917, ...]

Since most results are returned as integer IDs (like item.kids above), these results require further iteration. Instead of doing this yourself, use the expand flag to get object-oriented, detailed item info by id:

item = hn.get_item(8863, expand=True)
# >>> item.kids
# [<hackernews.Item: 9224 - None>, <hackernews.Item: 8952 - None>, ...]
# >>> item.by
# <hackernews.User: dhouston>

To query a list of Item IDs:

items = hn.get_items_by_ids([8863, 37236, 2345])
# >>> items
# [<hackernews.Item: 8863 - My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive>, <hackernews.Item:
# 37236 - None>, <hackernews.Item: 2345 - The Best Buy Scam.>]

Use the item_type filter to specifically select 'story', 'comment', 'job', or 'poll' items:

items = hn.get_items_by_ids([8863, 37236, 2345], item_type='story')
# >>> items
# [<hackernews.Item: 8863 - My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive>, <hackernews.Item: # 2345 - The Best Buy Scam.>]

Stories

The HN API allows for real-time querying for New, Top, Best, Ask HN, Show HN, and Jobs stories.

As an example, to get Item objects of current top stories:

top_stories = hn.top_stories()
# >>> top_stories
# [<hackernews.Item: 16924667 - Ethereum Sharding FAQ>, ...]

Useful Item Queries

To get current largest Item id (most recent story, comment, job, or poll):

max_item = hn.get_max_item()
# >>> max_item
# 16925673

Once again, use the expand flag to get an object-oriented, detailed Item representation:

max_item = hn.get_max_item(expand=True)
# >>> max_item
# <hackernews.Item: 16925673 - None>

To get the x most recent Items:

last_ten = hn.get_last(10)
# >>> last_ten
# [<hackernews.Item: 16925688 - Show HN: Eventbot – Group calendar for Slack teams>, ...]

Users

HN users are also queryable.

To query users by user_id (i.e. username on Hacker News):

user = hn.get_user('pg')
# >>> user.user_id
# 'pg'
# >>> user.karma
# 155040

Use the expand flag to get an object-oriented, detailed Item representation for User attributes:

user = hn.get_user('dhouston', expand=True)
# >>> user.stories
# [<hackernews.Item: 1481914 - Dropbox is hiring a Web Engineer>, ...]
# >>> user.comments
# [<hackernews.Item: 16660140 - None>, <hackernews.Item: 15692914 - None>, ...]
# >>> user.jobs
# [<hackernews.Item: 3955262 - Dropbox seeking iOS and Android engineers>, ...]

To query a list of users:

users = hn.get_users_by_ids(['pg','dhouston'])
# >>> users
# [<hackernews.User: pg>, <hackernews.User: dhouston>]

Examples

Get top 10 stories:

hn.top_stories(limit=10)

# [<hackernews.Item: 16924667 - Ethereum Sharding FAQ>, <hackernews.Item: 16925499 - PipelineDB # v0.9.9 – One More Release Until PipelineDB Is a PostgreSQL Extension>, ...]

Find all the 'jobs' post from Top Stories:

stories = hn.top_stories()
for story in stories:
    if story.item_type == 'job':
        print(story)

# <hackernews.Item: 16925047 - Taplytics (YC W14) is solving hard engineering problems in
# Toronto and hiring>
# ...
# ...

Find Python jobs from monthly who is hiring thread:

# Who is hiring - April 2018
# https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16735011

who_is_hiring = hn.get_item(16735011, expand=True)

for comment in who_is_hiring.kids:
    if 'python' in comment.text.lower():
        print(comment)

# <hackernews.Item: 16735358 - None>
# <hackernews.Item: 16737152 - None>
# ...
# ...

API Reference

Class: HackerNews

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
version	string	No	specifies Hacker News API version	v0

get_item

Description: Returns Item object

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
item_id	string/int	Yes	unique item id of Hacker News story, comment etc	None
expand	bool	No	flag to indicate whether to transform all IDs into objects	False

get_items_by_ids

Description: Returns list of Item objects

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
item_ids	list of string/int	Yes	unique item ids of Hacker News stories, comments etc	None
item_type	string	No	item type to filter results with	None

get_user

Description: Returns User object

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
user_id	string	Yes	unique user id of a Hacker News user	None
expand	bool	No	flag to indicate whether to transform all IDs into objects	False

get_users_by_ids

Description: Returns list of User objects

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
user_ids	list of string/int	Yes	unique user ids of Hacker News users	None

top_stories

Description: Returns list of Item objects of current top stories

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
raw	bool	No	indicate whether to represent all objects in raw json	False
limit	int	No	specifies the number of stories to be returned	None

new_stories

Description: Returns list of Item objects of current new stories

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
raw	bool	No	indicate whether to represent all objects in raw json	False
limit	int	No	specifies the number of stories to be returned	None

ask_stories

Description: Returns list of Item objects of latest Ask HN stories

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
raw	bool	No	indicate whether to represent all objects in raw json	False
limit	int	No	specifies the number of stories to be returned	None

show_stories

Description: Returns list of Item objects of latest Show HN stories

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
raw	bool	No	indicate whether to represent all objects in raw json	False
limit	int	No	specifies the number of stories to be returned	None

job_stories

Description: Returns list of Item objects of latest Job stories

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
raw	bool	No	indicate whether to represent all objects in raw json	False
limit	int	No	specifies the number of stories to be returned	None

updates

Description: Returns list of Item and User objects that have been changed/updated recently.

Parameters: N/A

get_max_item

Description: Returns current largest item id or current largest Item object

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
expand	bool	No	flag to indicate whether to transform ID into object	False

get_all

Description: Returns all Item objects from HN

Parameters: N/A

get_last

Description: Returns list of num most recent Item objects

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description	Default
num	int	No	numbr of most recent records to pull from HN	10

Class: Item

From Official HackerNews Item:

Property	Description
item_id	The item’s unique id.
deleted	true if the item is deleted.
item_type	The type of item. One of “job”, “story”, “comment”, “poll”, or “pollopt”.
by	The username of the item’s author.
submission_time	Creation date of the item, in Python datetime.
text	The comment, Ask HN, or poll text. HTML.
dead	true if the item is dead.
parent	The item’s parent. For comments, either another comment or the relevant story. For pollopts, the relevant poll.
poll	The ids of poll's.
kids	The ids of the item’s comments, in ranked display order.
url	The URL of the story.
score	The story’s score, or the votes for a pollopt.
title	The title of the story or poll.
parts	A list of related pollopts, in display order.
descendants	In the case of stories or polls, the total comment count.
raw	original JSON response.

Class: User

From Official HackerNews User:

Property	Description
user_id	The user’s unique username. Case-sensitive.
delay	Delay in minutes between a comment’s creation and its visibility to other users.
created	Creation date of the user, in Python datetime.
karma	The user’s karma.
about	The user’s optional self-description. HTML.
submitted	List of the user’s stories, polls and comments.
raw	original JSON response.

Additional properties when expand is used

Property	Description
stories	The user’s submitted stories.
comments	The user's submitted comments.
jobs	The user's submitted jobs.
polls	The user's submitted polls.
pollopts	The user's submitted poll options.

Development

For local development do pip installation of requirements-dev.txt:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

Testing

Run the test suite by running:

echo "0.0.0-dev" > version.txt
python setup.py develop
pytest tests

LICENSE

The mighty MIT license. Please check LICENSE for more details.