Replicate Multiple Hacker News Accounts via the CData Sync CLI

CData Sync for Hacker News is a stand-alone application that provides solutions for a variety of replication scenarios such as replicating sandbox and production instances into your database. Both Sync for Windows and Sync for Java include a command-line interface (CLI) that makes it easy to manage multiple Hacker News connections. In this article we show how to use the CLI to replicate multiple Hacker News accounts.

Configure Hacker News Connections

You can save connection and email notification settings in an XML configuration file. To replicate multiple Hacker News accounts, use multiple configuration files. Below is an example configuration to replicate Hacker News to SQLite:

Windows

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync>
  <DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType>
  <DatabaseProvider>System.Data.SQLite</DatabaseProvider>
  <ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None</ConnectionString>
  <ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
  <NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
  <DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
  <TaskSchedulerStartTime>09:51</TaskSchedulerStartTime>
  <TaskSchedulerInterval>Never</TaskSchedulerInterval>
</CDataSync>

Java

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync>
<DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType>
  <DatabaseProvider>org.sqlite.JDBC</DatabaseProvider>
  <ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None</ConnectionString>
  <ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
  <NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
  <DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
</CDataSync>

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

Configure Queries for Each Hacker News Instance

Sync enables you to control replication with standard SQL. The REPLICATE statement is a high-level command that caches and maintains a table in your database. You can define any SELECT query supported by the Hacker News API. The statement below caches and incrementally updates a table of Hacker News data:

REPLICATE TopStories;

You can specify a file containing the replication queries you want to use to update a particular database. Separate replication statements with semicolons. The following options are useful if you are replicating multiple Hacker News accounts into the same database:

You can use a different table prefix in the REPLICATE SELECT statement:

REPLICATE PROD_TopStories SELECT * FROM TopStories 

Alternatively, you can use a different schema:

REPLICATE PROD.TopStories SELECT * FROM TopStories

Run Sync

After you have configured the connection strings and replication queries, you can run Sync with the following command-line options:

Windows

APISync.exe -g MyProductionAPIConfig.xml -f MyProductionAPISync.sql

Java

java -Xbootclasspath/p:c:\sqlitejdbc.jar -jar APISync.jar -g MyProductionAPIConfig.xml -f MyProductionAPISync.sql