Hacker News Reader

A native desktop application for browsing Hacker News with a clean, modern interface. Built with Rust and egui.

Screenshot

Features

• Browse top stories from different Hacker News sections:
  • Hot Stories (front page)
  • New Stories
  • Show HN
  • Ask HN
  • Jobs
  • Best Stories
• View comments in a threaded, Reddit-like format with auto-folding and adjustable font size
• Toggle between default and latest-first comment ordering
• Search and filter stories by title, domain, or author
• Share stories to social media or copy links with a single click
• Track your reading history automatically
• Automatically loads more content when scrolling to the bottom
• Color-coded stories based on score
• Dark and light mode support
• Offline capability with local caching
• Favorite stories for later reading
• Mark stories as "todo" and "done" to track reading progress
• Open articles in your default browser

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust (1.70.0 or newer)
• Cargo package manager

Building from Source

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/haojiang99/hacker_news_reader.git
   cd hacker_news_reader

2. Build the application:

   cargo build --release

3. Run the application:

   cargo run --release

The compiled binary will be available at target/release/hacker_news_reader.

Usage

Navigation

• Tabs: Click the tabs at the top to switch between different Hacker News sections (Hot, New, Show, Ask, Jobs, Best).
• Stories: Click on a story title to open it in your default web browser.
• Comments: Click on the comments count to view the comments for a story.
• Back: Use the back button or press Backspace to return to the story list from comments view.
• Refresh: Click the refresh button to reload the current section. Hold Shift while clicking to bypass the cache.
• Theme: Toggle between dark and light themes using the theme button.
• Favorites: Click the hamburger menu (☰) to show or hide your favorite stories.

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Arrow Keys: Use arrow keys to navigate through stories.
• Space / Page Down: Scroll down a page.
• Page Up: Scroll up a page.
• Home: Scroll to the top.
• End: Scroll to the bottom.
• Backspace: Return to the story list from the comments view.
• C: When viewing comments, collapse all top-level comments.
• Shift+C: When viewing comments, expand all comments.
• + (Plus): Increase comment font size when in comments view.
• - (Minus): Decrease comment font size when in comments view.
• Ctrl+S: Toggle the side panel (favorites).
• Ctrl+F: Show search interface to filter stories.
• Ctrl+L: Copy the current article's link to clipboard.
• Ctrl+R: Refresh current view and bypass cache.
• Escape: Close search interface.
• 1-6 Number Keys: Switch between tabs (1=Hot, 2=New, 3=Show, 4=Ask, 5=Jobs, 6=Best).
• T: Mark selected story as Todo (for later reading).
• D: Mark selected story as Done (or toggle back to not done).
• Ctrl+O: When viewing comments, open the article in your browser.

Story List

The story list displays up to 150 stories per section (5 pages of 30 stories each). Each story shows:

• Story number
• Title (color-coded by score)
• Source domain
• Author
• Score
• Time posted
• Comments count

Comments View

The comments view shows a threaded display of comments. Features include:

• Auto-folding of comments when first loaded for better overview
• Collapsible comment threads
• Toggle between default and latest-first comment ordering
• Adjustable font size with + and - keys or buttons
• Author highlighting
• Nested replies
• Comment age display
• Share button to share article or copy link
• HTML formatting preserved from original comments

Favorites

To save a story to your favorites:

1. Click the star icon next to a story.
2. Access your favorites by clicking the hamburger menu (☰) in the upper left.

Favorites are stored locally in a SQLite database.

Development

• Run tests:

  cargo test

• Check for errors without building:

  cargo check

• Format code:

  cargo fmt

• Run lints:

  cargo clippy

Architecture

The application follows a simple architecture with three main components:

1. UI Layer (main.rs): Contains the main application structure (HackerNewsReaderApp) and handles rendering with egui.

2. Data Models (models.rs): Defines the core data structures:

   • HackerNewsItem: Represents a story/post
   • HackerNewsComment: Represents a comment with nested children

3. Hacker News Client (hn_client.rs): Handles HTTP requests to fetch Hacker News content and parses HTML responses using the scraper library.

License

MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Hacker News for the content
• egui for the UI framework
• reqwest for HTTP requests
• scraper for HTML parsing