
Ask HN: How to get timestamp from HN comments? - franciscop
I am doing a small project that implies parsing the HN comments, and I would love to be able to read the time of the comments displayed. However the webpage only gives this information:<p><pre><code>    &lt;span class=&quot;age&quot;&gt;
      &lt;a href=&quot;item?id=____&quot;&gt;X days|hours|minutes ago&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;
    &lt;&#x2F;span&gt;
</code></pre>
Is it possible to retrieve the exact date somehow? I see that Firebase is doing it somehow [1], but it might be:<p>1. They have a special partnership which allows them to plug into their data in a different way<p>2. They are parsing threads every N (10?) minutes and rounding the seconds<p>I think it&#x27;d be ridiculous to have to load a full API request for each comment in my project to Firebase only to get their timestamp, so I&#x27;d love some advice on how to get that. If any HN developer sees this, could we get something like this (or any other standard way)?<p><pre><code>    &lt;span class=&quot;age&quot; data-timestamp=&quot;Mon Oct 31 16:05:12 2016&quot;&gt;
      &lt;a href=&quot;item?id=____&quot;&gt;X days|hours|minutes ago&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;
    &lt;&#x2F;span&gt;

</code></pre>
[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;HackerNews&#x2F;API
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brudgers
The |contact| link at the bottom of the pagel is probably the best way to get
more information...at least if accurate information counts.

