hackernews-TUI

hackernews_tui is a fast and customizable application for browsing Hacker News on the terminal.

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

Table of Contents

• Install
  • Binaries
  • Using Cargo
  • Docker Image
  • Building from source
  • macOS
  • Arch Linux
  • NetBSD
• Examples
  • Demo
• Default Shortcuts
  • Global key shortcuts
  • Edit key shortcuts
  • Key shortcuts for each View
    • Story View
    • Article View
    • Comment View
    • Search View
• Configuration
• Authentication
• Logging
• Roadmap

Install

Binaries

Application's prebuilt binaries can be found in the Releases Page.

Using cargo

Install the latest version from crates.io by running cargo install hackernews_tui.

Docker image

You can download the binary image of the latest build from the master branch by running

docker pull aome510/hackernews_tui:latest

then run

docker run -it aome510/hackernews_tui:latest

to run the application. You can also use your local configuration file when running the image by running

docker run --rm -v ${CONFIG_FILE_PATH}:/app/hn-tui.toml -it aome510/hackernews_tui:latest

with ${CONFIG_FILE_PATH} is the path to the local configuration file.

Building from source

Run

git clone https://github.com/aome510/hackernews-TUI.git
cd hackernews-TUI
cargo build --release

to build the application, then run

./target/release/hackernews_tui

to run the application, or

ln -sf $PWD/target/release/hackernews_tui /usr/local/bin

to link the executable binary to /usr/local/bin folder.

macOS

Via MacPorts

Run sudo port install hackernews-tui to install the application.

Arch Linux

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

NetBSD

Using the package manager

pkgin install hackernews-tui

Building from source

cd /usr/pkgsrc/www/hackernews-tui
make install

Examples

Demo

Demo videos of hackernews_tui v0.9.0 are available on youtube and asciinema

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.

The below sections will list the application's default shortcuts, which can be customized by changing the key mappings in the user's config file.

For more information about configuring the application's key mappings or defining custom shortcuts, please refer to the config documentation.

Global shortcuts

Edit shortcuts

Scrolling shortcuts

Shortcuts for each View

Story View shortcuts

Article View shortcuts

Link dialog shortcuts

Comment View shortcuts

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 a query string.

Navigation mode allows the SearchView to behave like a StoryView of matched stories.

SearchView-specific key shortcuts:

Configuration

By default, hackernews-tui will look for the hn-tui.toml user-defined config file inside

• the user's config directory
• .config directory inside the user's home directory

If not found such file, the application will fall back to use a set of default configurations.

User can also specify the path to config file when running the application with -c or --config option.

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

For further information about the application's configurations, please refer to the example config file and the config documentation.

Authentication

Users can authenticate their account by specifying username and password inside the hn-auth.toml file:

username=""
password=""

By default, the authentication file should be inside the same folder as the the general configuration file (hn-tui.toml), which can be configured by specifying the -a or --auth option.

Logging

hackernews-tui uses RUST_LOG environment variable to define the application's logging level (default to be INFO).

By default, the application creates the hn-tui.log log file inside the user's cache directory, which can be configured by specifying the -l or --log option.

Roadmap

• make all commands customizable
• 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
• make all the configuration options optional
• integrate HackerNews Official APIs for real-time updating, lazy-loading comments, and sorting stories
  • lazy-loading comments
  • front-page stories like the official site
  • real-time updating
• implement smarter lazy-loading comment functionality
• add crediential support to allow
  • authentication
  • upvote/downvote
  • add comment
  • post
• improve application's UI
  • improve the application's overall look
  • include useful font-highliting
  • rewrite the theme parser to support more themes and allow to parse themes from known colorschemes
  • add some extra transition effects
• improve the keybinding handler
  • allow to bind multiple keys to a single command
  • add prefix key support (emacs-like key chaining - C-x C-c ...)