Automate Hacker News Integration Tasks from PowerShell

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Are you in search of a quick and easy way to access Hacker News data from PowerShell? This article demonstrates how to utilize the Hacker News Cmdlets for tasks like connecting to Hacker News data, automating operations, downloading data, and more.

The CData API Driver for ADO.NET is a standard ADO.NET Provider that make it easy to accomplish data cleansing, normalization, backup, and other integration tasks by enabling real-time access to Hacker News.

ADO.NET Provider

The ADO.NET Provider provides a SQL interface for Hacker News; this tutorial shows how to use the Provider to retrieve Hacker News data.

Once you have acquired the necessary connection properties, accessing Hacker News data in PowerShell can be enabled in three steps.

Connecting to HackerNews

The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

Example connection string:

Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
  1. Load the provider's assembly:

    [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\CData\CData API Driver for ADO.NET\lib\System.Data.CData.API.dll")
        
  2. Connect to Hacker News:

     
    $conn= New-Object System.Data.CData.API.APIConnection("Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None")
    $conn.Open()
    
  3. Instantiate the APIDataAdapter, execute an SQL query, and output the results:

    $sql="SELECT ,  from TopStories"
    
    $da= New-Object System.Data.CData.API.APIDataAdapter($sql, $conn)
    $dt= New-Object System.Data.DataTable
    $da.Fill($dt)
    
    $dt.Rows | foreach {
    	Write-Host $_. $_.
    }
      

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Hacker News with the API Driver

Connect to Hacker News