5 ms·

Show HN: Get latest replies to an HN user

42 points by ggerganov 5y ago

Hi HN, I hacked a simple service for gathering HN replies and organizing them by the parent's username. The main idea is to be able to efficiently get the latest replies to an HN user. For example, you can use this service to send yourself notifications when some replies to you on HN. The service queries the official HN API and can be self-hosted. It is basically ~30 lines of Bash script. I made this mostly for educational purposes -- thought you might find it useful for something. Cheers! Edit: for example, here are the latest replies to me [0]. It includes only recent replies, since I started the service just yesterday and it hasn't observed older replies. [0] https://hnreplies.ggerganov.com/?u=ggerganov https://hnreplies.ggerganov.com/?u=ggerganov

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 5y ago
In some cases this can cause a user to miss a reply in a discussion in which they had participated recently. Some users consider this to be a feature rather than a deficiency. Yeah, I'm kinda glad HN doesn't have that. I think it helps avoid prolonged, drawn-out arguments that just go around in circles, generate animosity, and lead nowhere. Not getting notifications makes it easier to just let a conversation die out. I would put this in the "feature" category myself.
- ggerganov 5y ago
  I completely agree - I just wondered how one would do that and wrote the Bash script. Then I tried to optimize it with C++ and finally thought - why not share. Btw, your comment somehow didn't get detected by my service :-). First I thought I have a bug somewhere, but then I checked the result from the official HN API and for some reason it fails to return a result for the item id (30014342) of your comment [0]. Strange .. haven't seen this before. [0] https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/30014342.json https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/30014342.json Edit: and it just showed up -- I guess it can take some time.
- daenz 5y ago
  Maybe they can even take it a step further and delay all comments by 3 hours. I think this could encourage people to be more thoughtful and accurate if they knew that the round trip for clarification or knee-jerk responses was not immediate.
alkonaut 5y ago
I use the HN email reply notification by Dan Grossman. http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ It find it would be impossible to maintain a useful discussion that lasts longer than just a few hours without it. It would be single drive-by comments without dialogue. I probably wouldn’t use HN at all if I didn’t have a service like this one. I do certainly not consider the risk of low quality drawn out debate to be worth missing out on replies.
- ggerganov 5y ago
  Thanks - I didn't know this existed (I now realize that I didn't even bother to check if the "hnreplies" name has been used already..)
- boogies 5y ago
  > It find it would be impossible to maintain a useful discussion that lasts longer than just a few hours without it. What’s wrong with https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alkonaut https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alkonaut? (Where the “threads” link in your top bar leads.) It doesn’t show discussions from weeks ago on the first page, but it does show a couple of days worth at the moment.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    If you post frequently enough you’ll start getting responses on comments from page two or three of that list, which you might miss otherwise.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    That’s the alternative. But I don’t want to poll that page every 15 minutes. A notification is better.
    - boogies 5y ago
      I guess the convenience comparison depends on how the notification is received and how you browse HN. In my system the worst common scenario involves me viewing a different “workspace” than my browser with the page not open in it, requiring a 2 key chord (Super + 9) to go to the dwm tag where luakit lives and 3 more keypresses (g n t) to go in a new tab to my HN threads quickmark, [Edit:] and at my typing speed of 75 wpm | 6.25 characters per second, it takes about ⅘ of a second + page load time to check, and leaves me at a page full of links to the replies and their context.
codegeek 5y ago
Power of good old bash scripts. Nicely done. Of course as another poster mentioned, we have the hnreplies.com service as well. But what's the fun in that when you can hack your own :)
banana_giraffe 5y ago
For anyone that finds it useful, same idea, but a script that can run locally and produce something an RSS reader could parse: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fedf6829 https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fe...
stavros 5y ago
If you use Telegram, I wrote a reply bot that's extremely easy to use: https://gitlab.com/stavros/hn-reply-bot https://gitlab.com/stavros/hn-reply-bot Just send it your username and it'll notify you on reply.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Thanks. Using it!
  - stavros 5y ago
    You're welcome!
supperburg 5y ago
I think it’s better when you have to remember to go back and check for replies. Why would you want to entertain a petty argument that you can’t even remember
WithinReason 5y ago
I use the RSS version of this service: https://hnrss.org/replies?id=ggerganov https://hnrss.org/replies?id=ggerganov
livinglist 5y ago
recently been working on a HN reader which includes in app notifications when users have new replies. But I’m doing this the dumb way though, I select 15 latest stories/comments posted by the user, and then fetch the content and compare to the cached one to see if there is new ‘kid’, and I do this every couple minutes: https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki

42 points by ggerganov 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mindcrime 5y ago

In some cases this can cause a user to miss a reply in a discussion in which they had participated recently. Some users consider this to be a feature rather than a deficiency. Yeah, I'm kinda glad HN doesn't have that. I think it helps avoid prolonged, drawn-out arguments that just go around in circles, generate animosity, and lead nowhere. Not getting notifications makes it easier to just let a conversation die out. I would put this in the "feature" category myself.

ggerganov 5y ago
I completely agree - I just wondered how one would do that and wrote the Bash script. Then I tried to optimize it with C++ and finally thought - why not share. Btw, your comment somehow didn't get detected by my service :-). First I thought I have a bug somewhere, but then I checked the result from the official HN API and for some reason it fails to return a result for the item id (30014342) of your comment [0]. Strange .. haven't seen this before. [0] https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/30014342.json https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/30014342.json Edit: and it just showed up -- I guess it can take some time.
daenz 5y ago
Maybe they can even take it a step further and delay all comments by 3 hours. I think this could encourage people to be more thoughtful and accurate if they knew that the round trip for clarification or knee-jerk responses was not immediate.

alkonaut 5y ago

I use the HN email reply notification by Dan Grossman. http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/ It find it would be impossible to maintain a useful discussion that lasts longer than just a few hours without it. It would be single drive-by comments without dialogue. I probably wouldn’t use HN at all if I didn’t have a service like this one. I do certainly not consider the risk of low quality drawn out debate to be worth missing out on replies.

ggerganov 5y ago
Thanks - I didn't know this existed (I now realize that I didn't even bother to check if the "hnreplies" name has been used already..)
boogies 5y ago
> It find it would be impossible to maintain a useful discussion that lasts longer than just a few hours without it. What’s wrong with https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alkonaut https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=alkonaut? (Where the “threads” link in your top bar leads.) It doesn’t show discussions from weeks ago on the first page, but it does show a couple of days worth at the moment.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  If you post frequently enough you’ll start getting responses on comments from page two or three of that list, which you might miss otherwise.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  That’s the alternative. But I don’t want to poll that page every 15 minutes. A notification is better.
  - boogies 5y ago
    I guess the convenience comparison depends on how the notification is received and how you browse HN. In my system the worst common scenario involves me viewing a different “workspace” than my browser with the page not open in it, requiring a 2 key chord (Super + 9) to go to the dwm tag where luakit lives and 3 more keypresses (g n t) to go in a new tab to my HN threads quickmark, [Edit:] and at my typing speed of 75 wpm | 6.25 characters per second, it takes about ⅘ of a second + page load time to check, and leaves me at a page full of links to the replies and their context.

codegeek 5y ago

Power of good old bash scripts. Nicely done. Of course as another poster mentioned, we have the hnreplies.com service as well. But what's the fun in that when you can hack your own :)

banana_giraffe 5y ago

For anyone that finds it useful, same idea, but a script that can run locally and produce something an RSS reader could parse: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fedf6829 https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/15e61acc003bb6d46a458001fe...

stavros 5y ago

If you use Telegram, I wrote a reply bot that's extremely easy to use: https://gitlab.com/stavros/hn-reply-bot https://gitlab.com/stavros/hn-reply-bot Just send it your username and it'll notify you on reply.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Thanks. Using it!
- stavros 5y ago
  You're welcome!

supperburg 5y ago

I think it’s better when you have to remember to go back and check for replies. Why would you want to entertain a petty argument that you can’t even remember

WithinReason 5y ago

I use the RSS version of this service: https://hnrss.org/replies?id=ggerganov https://hnrss.org/replies?id=ggerganov

livinglist 5y ago

recently been working on a HN reader which includes in app notifications when users have new replies. But I’m doing this the dumb way though, I select 15 latest stories/comments posted by the user, and then fetch the content and compare to the cached one to see if there is new ‘kid’, and I do this every couple minutes: https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki https://github.com/Livinglist/Hacki