

HNSearch Feature Requests - andres

Please let us know about bug fixes and feature requests for hnsearch.com and the HNSearch API.
======
joshka
Please don't break the spacebar key acting as page down. The search text box
takes all the key presses regardless of focus. I find this annoying in a
'breaks expectations' kind of way.

~~~
andres
fixed

~~~
joshka
thanks!

------
mtw
I'd like a RSS for search result (want to subscribe to a topic and get a
notification whenever it's mentionned here)

------
AnupSavvy
If its Solr or Lucene running underneath then you could use phonetic analyzer
to get expected results if the spelling is not correct. I got results
with'Steve Jobs'but when I tried 'Steve Jbs' I got no results. I would say
getting close results is better than no results.

------
ZackOfAllTrades
If there are only a few options for a variable, could you have them be
expressed as part of the object returned by
[http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items?pretty_print=...](http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items?pretty_print=true)
Example: Type. Although it is a string, it isn't really a string field. It is
a binary choice between two preset strings (comment or submission).

It would make using the schema for things much easier.

------
jflatow
I'm not sure why, but I've noticed that sometimes the points field is null,
even though it shouldn't be. See for example the second result here:

[http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?q=sky...](http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?q=skype&filter%5Bfields%5D%5Btype%5D%5B%5D=submission&sortby=points+desc&_=1307314960533&pretty_print=true)

~~~
andres
I think points is null because that item is < 5 days old. The API should only
return points for items > 5 days old.

~~~
jflatow
why this restriction?

------
thaumaturgy
Looks like items marked [dead] in HN will show up as zombie search results --
i.e., they get returned in the search results for the items collection but the
discussion field is null.

For example: filter[fields][type]=comment&filter[fields][username]=pg

...the second result there has a null discussion field. Getting the submission
title &etc. would be nice.

~~~
andres
The 'discussion' attribute contains info about the discussion that the comment
belongs to. In this case the parent discussion is [dead] so the value of
'discussion' is null. Unfortunately, we don't have access to submission titles
for [dead] submissions.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Is there a way to exclude values from search results in the ThriftDB API?
i.e., say I want to,

    
    
        [filter][domain]=nytimes.com&[filter][username]!=ausername
    

...is there a way to do that? I tried the "exclude" operator after [username]
and get an "internal server error" every time.

~~~
andres
&filter[fields][domain]=nytimes.com&filter[queries][]=-username:ausername

~~~
thaumaturgy
Great! Thanks.

------
pestaa
I'm not sure US users have noticed, but I can't use the service from Europe,
Hungary. It just keeps connecting to the api, tested with latest Chrome and
FF.

~~~
andres
Can you access ThriftDB (<http://www.thriftdb.com>)?

------
tlvince
It's minor but sticking to conventional operators would be helpful. For
example, I find myself typing "intitle:" rather than "title:" out of habit.

~~~
andres
I just added support for the "intitle:" operator.

------
jflatow
It would be really great to have the ability to sort by hotness (i.e. get the
top K hottest results (for a given search or not)).

~~~
andres
the default relevance algorithm uses hotness to sort results

------
zscally
it would be nice to see the next "start" point based off your limit / total
hits this would make implementing pagination simple!

------
RDDavies
Search only titles, then order by points/date.

~~~
andres
You can use the "title:" operator to search in titles.

------
joe_bleau
Work with Opera?

~~~
andres
Are you using 11.00? Other users have had problems accessing javascript-heavy
sites with 11.00:

[http://superuser.com/questions/234110/websites-not-
working-w...](http://superuser.com/questions/234110/websites-not-working-with-
opera-11-00-major-bugs)

