An API over Hacker News

mechanize (>= 1.0.0)
require_all (>= 1.1.0)

gem install ruby-hackernews

then, in your script:

require 'ruby-hackernews'

before using it.

You can get entries on the main page with:

Entry.all       # returns the main page's entries as an array

You can provide a number of pages:

Entry.all(3)    # will return the entries on the first 3 pages

There are methods for getting specific entry types:

Entry.questions # gets the first page of questions (ask NH)
Entry.newest    # gets the first page of new links (new)
Entry.jobs      # gets the first page of job offerts (jobs)

Each Entry instance has the following data:

entry = Entry.all.first # gets the top entry on the mainpage

entry.number       # the entry's position on HN

entry.link.title   # the link's name on HN
entry.link.href    # the actual link
entry.link.site    # the referring site, if any

entry.voting.score # the entry's score on HN

entry.user.name    # the submitter's user name

entry.time         # the elapsed time from submission

After you’ve logged in (see below) you can do the following

entry.upvote                     # votes the entry
entry.write_comment("mycomment") # adds a comment to the entry
Entry.submit("mytitle", "myurl") # submit a new link
Entry.submit("myquestion")       # submit a new question (ask HN)

You get an entry’s comments with:

entry.comments

You can also get the newest comments on HN with:

Comments.newest
Comments.newest(3)  # gets the first 3 pages of new comments

Each Comment instance has the following data:

comment = Entry.all.first.comments.first # gets the first comment of the first entry on HN's main page

comment.text           # comment's body
comment.user.name      # poster's user name on HN
comment.voting.score   # comment's score

Comments are enumerable and threaded, so you can do like:

comment[2][0]          # gets the third reply to this comment, then the first reply to the reply
comment.first          # gets the first reply to this comment
comment.select do |c|  # gets all the comment replies which text contains "test"
  text ~= /test/
end
comment.parent         # gets the comment's parent (nil if no parent)

Once you’re logged in (see below), you can do the following:

comment.upvote
comment.downvote
comment.reply("mycomment")

You define a user with:

user = User.new("username")

Then, you log in with:

user.login("password")

You can log out with:

user.logout

You have to log out before logging in with a different user.

Get user info (submission, comments...)
Create account
Change user info/settings

• Mike Kelly ( github.com/mikekelly ) for fixing a bug in TimeInfo.time

• Marc Köhlbrugge ( github.com/marckohlbrugge ) fox fixing and formatting the documentation

• Peter Cooper ( github.com/peterc ) for bug reports

• Peter Boctor ( github.com/boctor ) for fixing a bug about authentication