/API

Documentation and Samples for the Official HN API.

MIT LicenseMIT

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; there's also REST support.

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

The API is based at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com.

We hope to improve it over time, and may later enable access to private per-user data using OAuth. The changes won't always be backward compatible, so we're going to version the API. This first iteration will live at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/ and is structured as described below.

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 https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/.

All items have a subset of the following properties:

Field Description
id The item's unique id. Required.
deleted true if the item is deleted.
type The type of item. One of "job", "story", "comment", "poll", or "pollopt".
by The username of the item's author.
time Creation date of the item, in Unix Time.
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.
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.

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

{
  "by" : "dhouston",
  "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"
}

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

{
  "by" : "pg",
  "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,
  "parent" : 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 https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/.

Field Description
id The user's unique username. Case-sensitive. Required.
delay Delay in minutes between a comment's creation and its visibility to other users.
created Creation date of the user, in Unix Time.
karma The user's karma.
about The user's optional self-description. HTML.
submitted List 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,
  "delay" : 0,
  "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.

Top Stories

The current top 100 stories are at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.

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

[ 8414149, 8414078, 8413972, 8411638, 8414102, 8413204, 8413100, 8413971, 8412744, 8414003, 8412841, 8412802, 8412605, 8413548, 8413123, 8414437, 8412897, 8413028, 8413341, 8412425, 8411762, 8413623, 8412346, 8411356, 8413056, 8413365, 8412372, 8414055, 8412877, 8412167, 8413264, 8414137, 8410519, 8412933, 8411846, 8412929, 8411254, 8411512, 8412777, 8412626, 8413274, 8414389, 8414117, 8412114, 8412212, 8412759, 8412696, 8412768, 8411643, 8411866, 8413966, 8410976, 8410545, 8410358, 8413979, 8414129, 8411791, 8409075, 8410314, 8411532, 8411553, 8412099, 8412085, 8410356, 8409084, 8412862, 8409823, 8412705, 8410220, 8409323, 8414090, 8410326, 8414206, 8411026, 8408298, 8407364, 8413066, 8412104, 8412235, 8412786, 8395689, 8414318, 8406384, 8414314, 8406507, 8408501, 8413630, 8414180, 8400778, 8413804, 8407298, 8413233, 8412601, 8411277, 8409940, 8414287, 8397750, 8412679, 8412727, 8413104 ]

Max Item ID

The current largest item id is at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/maxitem.

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

8423374

Changed Items and Profiles

The item and profile changes are at https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/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" ]
}