Ask HN: What features for an offline Hacker News reader?

57 points

6 years ago

HN is a treasure trove of information. The primary way I read HN is to bookmark stories and read the comments when the discussion is complete. Others actively participate. Some get jobs via "Who is hiring?". We all use HN differently.

There are ways to read HN other than this website. However, I have not found one that meets all of these requirements:

  - Self-hosted.
  - Offline access of data.
  - Query data via SQL.
  - Full text search of stories and comments.
  - Notification of replies to comments.

Some ideas:

1) A tool that maintains a copy of the HN API[1] in an SQLite database, with indexing and full-text search[2]. This supports the development of the other tools.

2) A command line tool that demonstrates how to use the database and supports the development of scripts. For example:

  #!/bin/sh
  # Run notify whenever someone replies to a comment.
  $ hn replies username | notify

3) A web UI for browsing and searching. This can be hosted locally or on a remote server.

What features interest you?

  [1]: https://github.com/HackerNews/API
  [2]: https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html

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