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Hacker News Thread Fetcher

📰 Fetch Hacker News thread data using the official Firebase API - no authentication required! Perfect for tech news monitoring and community insights.

📺 What It Extracts

• Thread Metadata: ID, title, author, score, URL, submission time
• Comment Data: All comments with author, text, score, and timestamps
• Thread Structure: Parent-child relationships between comments
• Statistics: Total comment count and thread metadata

🚀 Key Features

📥 Input

Required (One of)

• itemId (integer): Hacker News item ID
  • Example: 12345678
• threadUrl (string): Hacker News thread URL
  • Example: "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678"

📤 Output

Returns comprehensive thread data:

Thread Metadata

{
"item":{
"id":12345678,
"title":"Thread Title",
"author":"username",
"score":150,
"url":"https://example.com/article",
"time":1704067200,
"timeDate":"2024-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
"descendants":45,
"type":"story"
}
}

Comments Array

{
"comments":[
{
"id":12345679,
"author":"commenter",
"text":"Comment text...",
"score":10,
"time":1704067300,
"timeDate":"2024-01-01T00:01:40.000Z",
"parent":12345678,
"kids":[12345680]
}
],
"totalComments":45
}

💡 Use Cases

• ✅ Tech News Monitoring - Track trending topics and discussions
• ✅ Community Insights - Analyze comment sentiment and engagement
• ✅ Content Research - Find relevant discussions and insights
• ✅ Trend Analysis - Monitor popular topics over time
• ✅ Social Listening - Track discussions about specific topics
• ✅ Data Analysis - Collect data for research and analytics

⚙️ Technical Details

• API Source: Official Hacker News Firebase API
• No Authentication: Public API - no keys required
• Data Format: JSON responses from Firebase
• Error Handling: Validates item IDs and handles missing threads
• Performance: Fast API-based extraction without browser overhead

📝 Example Usage

Using Item ID

{
"itemId":12345678
}

Using Thread URL

{
"threadUrl":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678"
}

⚠️ Important Notes

• Uses Hacker News Firebase API - no authentication needed!
• Item IDs can be found in the URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12345678
• Threads with deleted comments will show null for deleted comment fields
• The API is rate-limited but generally very permissive