Apify HN Scraper

Hacker News Scraper

Scrape Hacker News using an Apify Actor via the REST API.

Actor ID

0UDODOnpTkxY3Oc90

Prerequisites

• APIFY_TOKEN environment variable must be set
• curl and jq must be available

Workflow

Step 1: Confirm parameters with user

Ask what they want to scrape. Supported input fields:

• searchTerms (array of strings) - keywords to search
• maxResults (integer) - max stories to return
• sortBy (string) - "points", "date", or "relevance"
• includeComments (boolean) - include comment threads

Step 2: Run the Actor

RESULT=$(curl -s -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/0UDODOnpTkxY3Oc90/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["TERM"], "maxResults": 30}')
echo "$RESULT" | jq '.'

Step 3: Poll and fetch (if async)

RUN_ID=$(curl -s -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/0UDODOnpTkxY3Oc90/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"searchTerms": ["TERM"], "maxResults": 100}' | jq -r '.data.id')
curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/actor-runs/$RUN_ID?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" | jq -r '.data.status'
curl -s "https://api.apify.com/v2/actor-runs/$RUN_ID/dataset/items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" | jq '.'

Step 4: Present results

Summarize: top stories by points, comment counts, domains, trends. Offer JSON/CSV export.

Error Handling

• If APIFY_TOKEN not set: export APIFY_TOKEN=your_token
• If run FAILS: check log endpoint