hns

CLI app to monitor and extract the latest Hacker News stories.

The official web site for Hacker News can also show the latest new articles published if preferred.

Executing the program

The application is command line application that is run from a terminal program on macOS, Linux, or Windows. Example of the basic output from executing the program nhs is as below. If supported by the terminal, colour output is included.

./bin/hns 

Starting Hacker News Stream (hns)...
Starting article ID: 31546834
Waiting for new HN stories... checking every 2 minutes

    Title:      'UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’ Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries'
    NH Link:     https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31546839
    Story URL:   https://bylinetimes.com/2022/05/26/un-warns-of-total-societal-collapse-due-to-breaching-of-planetary-boundaries/
    Posted by:  'chewymouse' at 'Sun 29 May 2022 @ 07:08'
    Stats:      '1' displayed. '4' omitted. '5' total scanned.

    Title:      'AWS Graviton3 Hits GA with 3 Sockets per Motherboard Designs'
    NH Link:     https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31546847
    Story URL:   https://www.servethehome.com/amazon-aws-graviton3-hits-ga-with-3-sockets-per-motherboard-designs-tri-socket-arm/
    Posted by:  'mpweiher' at 'Sun 29 May 2022 @ 07:10'
    Stats:      '2' displayed. '11' omitted. '13' total scanned.

    Title:      'Distribution and diversity of Central African hunter-gatherers'
    NH Link:     https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31546870
    Story URL:   https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2113936119
    Posted by:  'bryanrasmussen' at 'Sun 29 May 2022 @ 07:14'
    Stats:      '3' displayed. '33' omitted. '36' total scanned.

Last check: 10:09:23

Example output with run with either -v or --version:

% hns --version

'./hns' version is: '0.5.4'
Compiled on: 'Jul 23 2022 @ 15:35:52'.
Copyright (c) 2022 Simon Rowe.

C++ source built as 'Release' using compiler 'clang 13.1.6 (clang-1316.0.21.2.5)'.

Included library versions:
- cpr version: '1.9.0'
- Curl library version: '7.84.0-DEV'
- fmt version: '80101'
- nlohmann_json version: '3.10.5'
- spdlog version: '11000'

For licenses and further information visit:
- Hacker News Stream (hns):   https://github.com/wiremoons/hns
- argparse:                   https://github.com/p-ranav/argparse
- curl:                       https://github.com/curl/curl
- Curl for People (cpr):      https://github.com/libcpr/cpr
- fmt:                        https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt
- nlohmann_json:              https://github.com/nlohmann/json
- spdlog:                     https://github.com/gabime/spdlog

Example output with run with either -h or --help:

% hns -h
Usage: hns [options] 

Hacker News Stream (HNS) obtains the latest stories from the Hacker News API.

Optional arguments:
-h --help       shows help message and exits
-v --version    prints version information and exits

Build

A C++ compiler is required to build hns.

• cmake is recommended to perform the build.
• vcpkg is recommended to perform the config and package management.

If the computer the build is being performed on has vcpkg available, then it will be used for building the library dependencies. Otherwise cmake will use its fecthContent feature instead.

In order to build using vcpkg or cmake directly, clone this repo and then run:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

The resulting program is in located the ./bin/ sub-directory.

To detect and use vcpkg the cmake process looks for the environment variable VCPKG_ROOT. Set this to the location of vcpkg installation. For assistance with installing vcpkg see: Get started with vcpkg.

# Most Unix (Linux, macOS, etc):
export VCPKG_ROOT=~/.vcpkg

Fedora Asahi - Build Issue

When excuting the build as decribed above on Fedora Asahi for aarch64 the vcpkg build fails on the OpenSSL library. To fix it addtional Perl modules are needed, that can be installed with the command:

sudo dnf install perl-IPC-Cmd perl-FindBin

Library Dependencies

The following libraries are used to build hns. They are included statically by default, and the dependency management is managed at build time either via vcpkg or cmake.

• argparse: https://github.com/p-ranav/argparse
• curl: https://github.com/curl/curl
• Curl for People (cpr): https://github.com/libcpr/cpr
• fmt: https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt
• nlohmann_json: https://github.com/nlohmann/json
• spdlog: https://github.com/gabime/spdlog

Thank you to the authors of the above libraries for making them available as open source.

License

The hns application is provided under the MIT open source license. A copy of the MIT license file is here.

The Hacker News API is provided under the MIT open source license. A copy of the license file is here.