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Show HN: Simple Hacker News Client for Emacs (github.com)

81 points by clarete ↗ HN
I wrote this small client to read hackernews from my favorite editor. It's currently using an external HTTP API [0] but I'm working on my own proxy [1].

I'd love to actually scrape and cache all the info I need using lisp. However, my time constraints are keeping me away of that goal. I could definitely use some help here! :)

I'm also planning to add support for comments and posting new things. Any feedback is highly appreciated! Thank you!

[0] http://api.ihackernews.com/ [1] https://github.com/clarete/rhn

27 comments

[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] thread
manojlds
If I were to create a mobile app for HackerNews, what would be the best way to go about doing that in terms of API to use?
clarete
So, hackernews.el is actually a very simple front-end for the guy that really has to deal with hackernews. I'm using a library that I built on top of `ruby-hackernews`, you can see what I did here: https://github.com/clarete/rhn
jpitz
Just sent a pull request - I'd use this if it linked to comments. Otherwise this is exactly what I want!
clarete
Yeah! Thank you for the contribution, I'll apply your patch and release another version as soon as I get the chance to open my computer!
thex86
Serious question: does anyone know of a similar command-line/vim alternative?
justinmk
w3m works great for hacker news.
marblar
I just get an error message: "Bad news, bro: url"
ihuman
Are things like these just proof-of-concepts, or are there many people out there that use these? It's things like this that are just promoting the joke that "Emacs is a great OS, but lacks a good text editor." (Honest question)
skylan_q
I'll be using it. I always have Emacs open anyways.
parfe
I use emacs for email and news reader (gnus), Irc (rcirc), jabber (jabber.el), twitter (twittering-mode), calculator, password storage (PGP encrypted file), and sysadmining (remote/sudo file editing with tramp).

And I use it as my primary development envrionment. I get the same text editor capabilities if I'm writing a tweet, email or code. And yes, vim is a far superior editor. Luckily emacs implements that as well (evil or viper).

nmcfarl
In case anyone else is tempted: I tried to add the "new" page, and additional pages of the main results - however the API that drives this ( http://api.ihackernews.com/ ) has been failing to return those pages for several hours now. I'm assuming that the functionality was dropped at some point...
clarete
Hmm, bad news. I'll work on polishing the new proxy support that is almost done in another branch, so we'll be able to use more reliable services for now.

And then, when I have some time, I'll write the full thing on lisp! Thanks for the heads up!

imdhmd
im new to emacs. can someone pls tell me, how will i update as and when new features have been made available to this package?
peferron
I love how the first item in the screenshot is "Does everyone hate MongoDB?". Good old HN.
justinhj
Great to see well documented emacs lisp code that I can learn from. I've been wondering how you make clickable and coloured text in a buffer.
deerpig
Very nice. But no font locking... I didn't see anything in the code to indicate anything that matches the screen shot.
justinhj
It looks exactly like the screen shot on my computer.
deerpig
Weird, I just get plain text. This links work, but no color.
endgame
Does this integrate with gnus, or is it standalone? In any case, I'm surprised I haven't seen something like this sooner. Nice work.