Post Hacker News Stories & Comments to an NNTP Server

Or how to read HN offline.

Features

• Uses the official HN API
• No configuration files
• CLI
• Compatible w/ cron jobs
• MIME multipart/alternative mails w/ html & txt portions
• Mostly stateless
• Read-only
• No up-voting support or score updates

Requirements

• nodejs 0.10.3x
• rnews CL util from INN package
• w3m browser

Installation & Setup

(in Fedora 21)

# yum install w3m inn

Add this to sudoers (replacing alex w/ your user name):

alex ALL = (news) NOPASSWD: /bin/rnews

Then in the cloned repo:

$ make

or just

# npm install -g hackernews2nntp

Check your local inn

# /usr/libexec/news/ctlinnd newgroup news.ycombinator

must not raise an error.

Then

$ hackernews2nntp-get exact 8874 -v | hackernews2nntp-convert -v -f mbox > 1.mbox

will download a HN comment & convert it to mbox format. If you have mutt installed, you can view it via mutt -f 1.box.

$ hackernews2nntp-get exact 8874 -v | hackernews2nntp-convert -v | sudo rnews -N

will post the same comment to news.ycombinator group. If the message didn't appear (because it's too old (Apr 2007) for a default INN settings), run

$ journalctl /bin/rnews
$ journalctl -u innd

Examples

0. Get top 100 stories & all comments for them, then exit:

    $ hackernews2nntp-get top100 -v | hackernews2nntp-convert -v | sudo rnews -N

   If you get an EPIPE error, don't pipe to rnews but try to invoke hackernews2nntp-conver w/ --fork option:

    $ hackernews2nntp-get top100 -v | hackernews2nntp-convert -v --fork

   (It will call sudo rnews -N internally for each article.)

1. Get last 200 stories/comments, then exit:

    $ hackernews2nntp-get last 200 -v --nokids | hackernews2nntp-convert -v | sudo rnews -N

2. Don't post anything to an NNTP server but create 1 big .mbox file:

    $ rm 1.mbox
    $ hackernews2nntp-get top100 -v | hackernews2nntp-convert -v -f mbox >> 1.mbox

3. Get stories/comments in range from 8,000,000 to 8,000,100:

    $ hackernews2nntp-get -v --nokids range 8000000 8000100 | hackernews2nntp-convert -v | sudo rnews -N

4. Get stories/comments from 8859730 up to the most current one & save the last (highest numerical value) item id in /tmp/last-item.txt:

    $ hackernews2nntp-get -v --maxitem-save /tmp/last-item.txt --nokids range 8859730 | hackernews2nntp-convert -v | sudo rnews -N

FAQ

0. I have a problem w/ rnews.

   Please, don't ask me any questions about INN. I have a very vague idea how it works. I've chosen rnews because it (a) can read articles form stdin in a batch mode, (b) doesn't modify the incoming article, (c) fast, (d) comes w/ INN.

   Unfortunately it's not possible to know 'was the article posted or not' w/o reading INN logs.

1. Can hackernews2nntp run as a daemon?

   No.

2. What does hackernews2nntp-convert warning: json validation failed message mean?

   Usually it means that a HN post was deleted & there was no usefull data in the json payload. For example,

    $ hackernews2nntp-get exact 126809 | json -g -c 'this.deleted'
    [
      {
    	"deleted": true,
    	"id": 127217
      }
    ]

   vs.

    $ hackernews2nntp-get exact 126809 | json -g \
    	-c '!this.kids && this.by == "pg" && this.type == "comment"' | json 0
    {
      "by": "pg",
      "id": 126816,
      "parent": 126809,
      "text": "As you can see, we do.  You can read more [...]",
      "time": 1204404016,
      "type": "comment"
    }

Bugs

• Barely tested on Fedora 21 only.
• Supports only UTF-8 locale.
• Don't follow 'parent' property, e.g. if it gets a comment, it tries to download all its 'kids', but ignores the 'parent'.
• hackernews2nntp-get can pause node 0.10.x process if you're not using --nokids option.
• src/crawler2.coffee is too long.

See Also

rnews(1), w3m(1), mbox(5), sudoers(5)

News

0.2.1

• hackernews2nntp-get
  • fix a crash in json validation

0.2.0

• hackernews2nntp-get
  • totally rewrite Crawler
  • throttle a max number of http requests by 20/s (see --conn-per-sec)

0.1.0

• hackernews2nntp-get

  • range mode
  • --maxitem-save CLO
  • -s CLO
  • always print statistics on exit w/ -v or -s CLOs

• hackernews2nntp-convert

  • --template-dir CLO
  • fix a bug in mbox header w/ missing leading zeros

Credits

Many thanks to John Magolske for suggestions for hackernews2nntp-get range mode & --maxitem-save CLO & also for reporting bugs.

License

MIT.