How to Scrape Hacker News Top Stories
Collect ranked Hacker News stories, scores, authors, links, timestamps, and discussion metadata through the official Firebase API.
The Hacker News front page changes quickly, so a screenshot or copied link list loses the ranking context that made a story interesting. A structured snapshot should preserve rank, score, comment count, author, timestamp, destination URL, and the permanent HN discussion URL.
Select the top feed in the Hacker News Scraper and choose a result limit. The Actor calls the official API, fetches item records concurrently, deduplicates overlaps, and returns one dataset row per story. Comments are optional because they increase both volume and PPE events.
For monitoring, schedule snapshots and join them by item ID. Store rank and score with the collection timestamp; they are observations, not permanent story attributes. That makes it possible to measure movement without claiming that a later snapshot represents the earlier front page.
Frequently asked questions
Does this use browser automation?
No. It reads Hacker News' official public Firebase API.
Are deleted items included?
The Actor skips unavailable feed items and exposes deletion status when the API returns it.