Wishlist for "1.0" release

[dgw]

These are things that would be nice to support/fix before declaring the plugin "stable" and releasing it on PyPI.

• Meta: Switch from setup.py-style build/install to pyproject.toml
  • Done in Metadata to release a "beta" 0.1.0 #10
• Indicate "Dead comment" vs. just plain "Comment" when a comment is "dead": true in Firebase JSON
  • "text" may be "[dead]", "[flagged]", possibly other values—but the original text is hidden if a comment is dead
  • Sample items: 37114623, 37115010
  • Implemented in Flag dead comments in output, just like dead stories #4
• Handle null items (e.g. mistyped or otherwise mangled ID, nuked beyond dead status, etc.)
  • Quick test of json.loads("null") says this should mean the item/user will satisfy is None, which is an easy sanity check to add at runtime and give a friendly error message if the object doesn't exist
  • Current code already does this, actually; only relevant to not-yet-handled stuff like users, which mentions the possibility of null separately
• Show story submitter
  • Stories/links, like comments, have a by field showing who submitted them
  • Implemented in Add author to 'story' type output; move 'when' & give it an icon #7
• Handle/differentiate "job" post type
  • Can have text or url, but seemingly not both (like a regular "story" item)
  • Sample items: 37111755, 37037224
  • Implemented in Handle 'job' item type #6
• Handle(/differentiate?) "poll" post type
  • Sample items: 126809 ("poll" type example from HN API docs)
  • Handle "pollopt" item type? Listed under "parts" field of a "type": "poll" item
    Can't imagine people will ever link directly to a poll option, so maybe summarizing the poll options when a "poll" gets linked is better? (Lot of extra API hits, though.)
• Handle/differentiate items from "ask" & "show" tabs
  • Also of "type": "story", but will have text instead of url and usually a category-specific prefix on the title ("Ask HN:"/"Tell HN:" for "ask" tab; "Show HN:" for "show" tab)
  • Sample items:
    • 37111256 – "story" type with text only, found under "ask" tab
    • 37119235 – text post that does NOT start with "Ask HN" but was discovered near the top of the "ask" tab anyway, somehow
• Handle stories of any type with no url field (current state as of 88c39cb: KeyError: 'url')
  • Sample items: 37111755 ("job" type with text only), 37111256 ("story" type with text only)
  • Implemented in Handle missing/empty url in story & job item types #9
• Handle deleted items (only deleted: true, id, time, and type fields present)
  • Sample: 38344153
  • Implemented in Bail out with a friendly error on deleted items #8
• Handle user profiles
  • Samples:
    • voyagerfan5761 – me! …until I can get a username change
      • about field contains ", so make sure to decode HTML entities in user bios
    • pg – founder/developer? lots of activity, submitted item 1 😮
    • dgw – not me! (at least not yet.)
      • as of writing this, has no public activity; such users are just null in the API, making users who've never posted/commented indistinguishable from nonexistent users (which should also be handled)
• Deal with useless (on IRC) HTML tags, to avoid cases such as described in Wishlist for "1.0" release #3 (comment)
• Maybe handle oddball links someone might copy by accident, like /edit?id=NNNNNN

I'll add to this if I think of more after submitting the issue.

[ghost]

One to not forget: double links because of <a href> tags.

<user> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38421121

<bot> [Hacker News] Comment by Ringz (2 hours, 28 minutes ago): My perfect bookmark manager is Markdownload <a href="https://github.com/deathau/markdownload">https://github.com/deathau/markdownload</a> ⏎ Just save the complete page, only selected text or only the link to a markdown file or Obsidian. With downloaded, linked or without pictures. My OS and Obsidian can search those files, they have more (automatically added) metadata. ⏎ I can even edit them […]

---

Edit: another example:

<user> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38472130

<bot> [Hacker News] Comment by i13e (2 hours, 8 minutes ago): This matches your requirements:<a href="https://maps.google.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://maps.google.com/</a>

[dgw]

v0.1.0 cut today with all the important functionality available. Submissions and comments work, and common edge cases like deleted items are handled.

In descending order of precedence, what's missing:

• User profile handling
• Stripping useless HTML, as mentioned in a comment above
• Differentiating/displaying polls and their options/results
• Handling "Ask/Show HN" items specially (maybe? just regular items with a specific title prefix, except when they're not)
• Support oddball HN links that happen to include an item ID anyway, like /edit (maybe?)