hackernews-TUI

hackernews_tui is a Terminal UI to browse Hacker News with fully customizable and vim-like key bindings.

hackernews_tui is written in Rust with the help of Cursive TUI library. It uses HN Algolia search APIs to get Hacker News data.

The application mainly consists of the following views:

• Story View displaying a list of HN stories. There are different kinds of Story View depending on the tag used to filter stories:
  • Front Page: stories on the front-page
  • All Stories: all stories
  • Ask HN: ask HN stories only
  • Show HN: show HN stories only
  • Jobs: jobs stories only
• Article View displaying the content of a web article in reader mode.
• Comment View displaying a list of comments in a story.
• Search View displaying a search bar and a list of stories matching the search query.

Why hackernews-TUI?

If you are either

• a Hacker News reader
• a computer nerd who likes doing things on terminal
• a vim key-bindings fanboy
• a person who prefers navigating using the keyboard over a mouse

This application is the right tool for you :muscle:

Table of Contents

• Install
  • Dependencies
  • Using Cargo
  • Arch Linux
  • NetBSD
• Examples
  • Demo
• Default Shortcuts
  • Global key shortcuts
  • Key shortcuts for each View
  • Story View
  • Article View
  • Comment View
  • Search View
• Configuration
  • User-defined shortcuts
• Debug
• Roadmap

Install

Dependencies

Mercury Parser

To enable viewing a web page in reader mode with Article View, install mercury-parser globally by running

```shell

using yarn

yarn global add @postlight/mercury-parser

or using npm

npm install -g @postlight/mercury-parser ```

Using cargo

Install the latest version from crates.io

Run cargo install hackernews_tui to install the application as a binary.

Build from the master branch

Run

```shell

git clone https://github.com/aome510/hackernews-TUI.git

cd hackernews-TUI

cargo build --release

```

to build the application, then run

```shell

./target/release/hackernews_tui

```

to run the application

Arch Linux

Run yay -S hackernews_tui to install the application as an AUR package.

NetBSD

Using the package manager

```shell

pkgin install hackernews-tui

```

Building from source

```shell $ cd /usr/pkgsrc/www/hackernews-tui

make install

```

Examples

Demo

List of demo videos:

• hackernews_tui v0.5.0: demo general usage of Story View, Search View and Comment View can be found here
• hackernews_tui v0.6.0-beta: demo the usage of Article View to read a web page in reader mode can be found here

Story View

Article View

Search View

Comment View

Default Shortcuts

In each View, press ? to see a list of supported keyboard shortcuts and their functionalities:

Global key shortcuts

• ?: Open the help dialog
• esc: Close a dialog
• C-q: Quit the application
• C-p: Go to the previous view
• C-f: Go to front page view
• C-s: Go to search view
• C-z: Go to all stories view
• C-x: Go to ask HN view
• C-c: Go to show HN view
• C-v: Go to jobs view

Key shortcuts for each View

Story View shortcuts

• j: Focus the next story
• k: Focus the previous story
• {story_id} g: Focus the {story_id}-th story
• enter: Go the comment view associated with the focused story
• o: Open in browser the article associated with the focused story
• O: Open in article view the article associated with the focused story
• s: Open in browser the focused story
• n: Go to the next page
• p: Go the previous page
• d: Toggle sort by date/popularity
• q: Filter stories past 24 hours
• w: Filter stories past week
• e: Filter stories past month
• r: Filter stories past year

Article View shortcuts

• k: Scroll up
• j: Scroll down
• u: Scroll up half a page
• d: Scroll down half a page
• t: Scroll to top
• b: Scroll to bottom
• o: Open article in browser
• {link_id} f: Open in browser {link_id}-th link
• {link_id} F: Open in article view {link_id}-th link

Link dialog shortcuts

• l: Open link dialog
• j: Focus next link
• k: Focus previous link
• f: Open in browser the focused link
• F: Open in article view the focused link

Comment View shortcuts

• j: Focus the next comment
• k: Focus the previous comment
• n: Focus the next top level comment
• p: Focus the previous top level comment
• l: Focus the next comment with smaller or equal level
• h: Focus the previous comment with smaller or equal level
• r: Reload the comment view.
• up: Scroll up
• down: Scroll down
• page_up: Scroll up half a page
• page_down: Scroll down half a page
• o: Open in browser the article associated with the discussed story
• O: Open in article view the article associated with the discussed story
• s: Open in browser the discussed story
• c: Open in browser the focused comment
• {link_id} f: Open in browser the {link_id}-th link in the focused comment
• {link_id} F: Open in article view the {link_id}-th link in the focused comment

Search View shortcuts

In SearchView, there are two modes: Navigation and Search. The default mode is Search.

Search mode is similar to Vim's Insert mode, in which users can input the query string.

Navigation mode allows the SearchView to behave like a StoryView with all StoryView shortcuts enabled.

Key shortcuts:

• i: Enter Search mode from Navigation mode
• <esc>: Enter Navigation mode from Search mode

Navigation mode also supports a subset of StoryView's key shortcuts.

Configuration

By default, the application will look for ~/.config/hn-tui.toml as its configuration file.

You can specify the path by specifying the -c or --config argument when running the application:

shell hackernews_tui -c ~/.config/hn-tui.toml

For further information about the config options, please refer to the example config file by running hackernews_tui --example-config.

Note: all config options (as included in the example config file) are required. You can run

shell hackernews_tui --example-config > ~/.config/hn-tui.toml

then modify the config options in ~/.config/hn-tui.toml based on your preferences.

User-defined shortcuts

Shortcuts in each View are full customizable, for futher information about the supported keys and the corresponding functionalities, please refer to the user-defined key bindings sections in the example config file by running hackernews_tui --example-config.

Debug

Run

shell RUST_LOG=debug hackernews_tui 2> log.txt

to view the application's log in log.txt file.

Roadmap

• [x] make all commands customizable
• [x] add a View to read the linked story in reader mode on the terminal. A list of possible suggestion can be found here
• [ ] add commands to navigate parent comments and collapse a comment
• [ ] integrate HackerNews Official APIs for real-time updating, lazy-loading comments, and sorting stories
• [ ] snipe-like navigation, inspired by vim-snipe
• [ ] support more themes
• [ ] add some extra transition effects