Connecting to HackerNews

The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

AuthScheme: Set this to None.

Example connection string:

Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None

Available Tables

The HackerNews API Profile provides access to the following tables:

Items: Retrieve a single HackerNews item by ID. Covers all item types (stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options) via the Type field discriminator.
TopStories: Retrieve the IDs of the current top 500 stories.
NewStories: Retrieve the IDs of the 500 newest stories.
BestStories: Retrieve the IDs of the current best 200 stories.
AskStories: Retrieve the IDs of the latest 200 Ask HN stories.
ShowStories: Retrieve the IDs of the latest 200 Show HN stories.
JobStories: Retrieve the IDs of the latest 200 job postings.
Users: Retrieve a single user profile by username, including karma, bio, account creation date, and submission history.
Updates: Retrieve the IDs of recently changed items and profiles.

Usage Examples

Browsing Story Lists

Get the current top story IDs:

SELECT * FROM TopStories

Get the current new story IDs:

SELECT * FROM NewStories

Get the current best story IDs:

SELECT * FROM BestStories

Get Ask HN story IDs:

SELECT * FROM AskStories

Get Show HN story IDs:

SELECT * FROM ShowStories

Get job posting IDs:

SELECT * FROM JobStories

Retrieving Item Details

Items include stories, comments, jobs, polls, and poll options. The Type field indicates which fields are populated.

Get a single item by ID:

SELECT * FROM Items WHERE Id = 8863

Retrieving User Profiles

Get a user profile by username:

SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Id = 'pg'

Real-Time Updates

Get the most recently changed items and user profiles:

SELECT * FROM Updates

Connection Properties

The connection string properties are the various options that can be used to establish a connection. This section provides a complete list of the options you can configure in the connection string for this provider.

Property	Description
AuthScheme	The scheme used for authentication. Accepted entry is None. Allowed values are: BASIC, NONE, NTLM, OAUTH, APIKEY, OAUTH_CLIENT