Ask HN: How to check if URL is posted to HN (without actually posting it)

3 points·jayliew··5 comments

Is it possible to check if a URL has been posted to HN without actually posting it?

One way, although inelegant, would be to post a URL and see if I can delete it right away. If I can, that means it hasn't been posted prior to me posting. I'll have to detect the "0 minutes ago" and the delete link

If I cannot delete, that means it already exists

slightly off-topic, I guess but... I think that checking if the same 'topic' (page title, main keywords, etc) has been posted may be more important. After all, even if nobody posted yet the URL I'm looking at... but if that URL is a brief blog post linking to another blog that passes through to the actual story... and if that story has been posted to HN... then I might as well add the URL I was looking at in a comment. No?

good point, but that's gonna be hard for recurring popular topics. It's gonna be difficult to tell the difference between "iPhone kills Android" vs "Android kills iPhone"

There's a Chrome extension that adds a tab with an URL's HN comments on the side. It will show up for any URL on HN (I think).

This one? http://github.com/adamalbrecht/hacker-news-for-chrome

Just tried it, there doesn't appear to be a way to check if a URL is already posted or not

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