Ask HN/PG: Is there an API for hackernews?

There's an API from the search engine provider, Algolia:

The 2010 era blog posts on best time to post used scraping, but the Algolia API just released is robust enough for HN data analysis. (proof: http://minimaxir.com/2014/02/hacking-hacker-news/ )

To download all stories:

To download all comments:

To download saved stories (not available via API; haven't personally tried it though):

Yeah, HTML scraping with PHP's DOM functions... I'm cleaning it up atm and will release it on github wehen done.

HN is, from a technological POV, stuck in the Middle Ages when compared to the startups that YCombinator backs.

The Algolia API is far superior than any scraping API (incidentally, it's also a YC startup)

try http://hnapp.com/ .. get the json response