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.
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.
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 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 ]
}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.
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 ]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
8423374The 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" ]
}