hnuserdownload

Downloads Hacker News comments/submissions for a user. Can be used as a module or from the commandline.

How to use

Install

$ npm install hnuserdownload

Include the module and run

var hnuserdownload = require('hnuserdownload');
    
hnuser(id, function(err, results) {
  if (err) console.log(err);
  console.log(csv);
});

Features

• Pages through results to get all comments and stories created by a user.
• Optionally stores data as JSON and CSV

Limitations

• Algolia (the source of the data) sets a limit of 1000 requests per hour. If making heavy use of the API, make sure that you look at the num_requests output to limit usage so that you do not get banned.

Use as a module

Example

var hnuserdownload = require('hnuserdownload');
hnuserdownload.hnuserdownload("pg", function(err, results)
{
	console.log(results);
});

There is also a method available to assist creating a CSV file.

Command Line Interface

hnuserdownload can also be called from the command line

Usage: hnuserdownload username [json] [csv]

The username is required. Include json and/or csv to create output files. The files will be named automatically based on the username.

Other ways to use it

hnuserstats (in progress) makes use of this library and includes statistics. That library will have a web frontend at [http://hnuser.herokuapp.com/] and Chrome extension frontend at [http://github.com/jaredsohn/hnkarmabreakdown].

About

Written by [Jared Sohn](mailto: [email protected]).