Checking by hand whether anyone mentioned your competitor, your niche or the tool you are evaluating wastes time, and you usually find out late. This API lets you search Hacker News by keyword, author, date, points or comment count, and it returns results in a format another tool can read and turn into an alert.
Who this is NOT for
Hacker News is an English-language forum for programmers and startup people. If your customers are a hardware store in Quito or a clinic in Lima, you will find neither your customers nor your competition there, so do not wire it up. It is also no use if nobody on your team can read a JSON response or build an automation workflow, because on its own it alerts you to nothing. And if the project's license or backing matters to you, note that we could not verify either one.
Almost everyone makes the same mistake: they use `/search` for monitoring, and that endpoint sorts by relevance and points, so it returns what was already popular, not what just came out. To watch a topic, use `/search_by_date` with `numericFilters=created_at_i>X`, which according to the docs returns only what was posted after that moment. That is what you need for a daily alert without repeats. The good part is that it works like a normal link, so you can try any search in your browser before automating anything. Keep in mind the docs say it is built on Algolia's search and do not explain how it relates to Hacker News as a site.
Your first step
Paste http://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?tags=story&query= into your browser and add the name of your niche or a competitor at the end. If nothing you care about shows up in the first 20 stories, drop it with no regrets.
The HN Search API implementation guide
The project belongs to hn.algolia.com and it is free: the link beside asks for nothing. The guide to set it up without getting lost is ours: step by step, common mistakes and a checklist. Leave your email and we will send it.
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