benwinding
commented
2 years ago Hey mate,
This is a cool idea, and I am aware of lobste.rs, but this integration is only possible if they provide a free API, here's some background on the current newsit endpoints.
Hacker News API
We use the generous free API from algolia here https://hn.algolia.com/api . This is because Hacker News is supported by YCombinator which are a massive venture capital firm.
Reddit API
Currently we just request from https://old.reddit.com and parse the HTML on the client, thankfully they allow CORS requests, so we can do this.
Lobste.rs API
Doesn't look like they have a public REST API, and we cannot make CORS requests, as their site hasn't enabled it (see image below).
Also, they're a small website presumably without a lot of backing, so I wouldn't want to beg them to support this extension for free (unless they want to).
Why not run a scraping server?
It would be possible for me to run an API server which would indirectly contact these endpoints, and the newsit extension would contact that API server, but I don't do that for the following reasons:
- Don't want to be making requests on behalf of newsit users
- Would prefer users to put their trust in
Hacker NewsandReddit, not me the newsit guy. - It costs money to maintain and run an API server
- Not as elegant or scalable either
Anyway, this was just me thinking out loud. Feel free to ask them for an API or if they can enable CORS requests on their pages
Zhomart
Lobsters is a computing-focused community centered around link aggregation and discussion, launched on July 3rd, 2012. The administrator is Peter Bhat Harkins ("pushcx"), contact him with any support issues. Lobsters was created by joshua stein with careful design touches to encourage a healthy community:
https://lobste.rs/about