

Show HN: I created a Chrome extension that reveals HN's hidden comment scores. - buddydvd
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kpmlnebfcgjcohlbodopejeiodegedap

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tzs
How does it get the data?

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sharat87
Looking at the js file in the extension, I see an AJAX call made to this:

    
    
        http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/...
    

Not sure, but thriftdb might be the source. But, I'm curious too.

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buddydvd
Yes. The comment score is queried from HNSearch's API. This extension was my
submission to the HNSearch API contest under the name "HN Reveal":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2672793>

Now, since the beginning of the API contest announcement, HNSearch's API does
not reveal score for comments that are less than 5 days old. After studying
the API, I figured out a way to bypass this restriction. If you construct a
faceted query for the "points" field with a search query that is narrow enough
to get exactly 1 hit, the facet result will reveal the vote score for that
comment (e.g. "9 points" has 1 hit).

When I submitted my entry to HNSearch, Andres emailed me back and told me to
disable revealing vote scores for comments that are less than 5 days old. In
addition, they modified their API to restrict my query.

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patd
Just out of curiosity, why the 5 days restriction ?

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buddydvd
Andres says "PG wants API apps to be consistent with the HN interface so we
removed points for items < 5 days."

