hn_submissions.py

# Author: Bojan G. Kalicanin
# Date: 28-Dec-2016
# Return IDs of current top articles on Hacker News.

import requests

from operator import itemgetter

import pygal

# Make an API call and store the response.
url = 'https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json'
r = requests.get(url)
print("Status code:", r.status_code)

# Process information about each submission.
submission_ids = r.json()
submission_dicts = []
for submission_id in submission_ids[:30]:
    # Make a separate API call for each submission.
    url = ('https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/' +
            str(submission_id) + '.json')
    submission_r = requests.get(url)
    print(submission_r.status_code)
    response_dict = submission_r.json()

    submission_dict = {
            'title': response_dict['title'],
            'link': 'http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=' + str(submission_id),
            'comments': response_dict.get('descendants', 0)
            }
    submission_dicts.append(submission_dict)

submission_dicts = sorted(submission_dicts, key=itemgetter('comments'),
                            reverse=True)

for submission_dict in submission_dicts:
    print("\nTitle:", submission_dict['title'])
    print("Discussion link:", submission_dict['link'])
    print("Comments:", submission_dict['comments'])

#chart = pygal.Bar()
#chart.title = 'Top 30 most commented articles'
#chart.add('', submission_dicts)
#chart.render_to_file('hn_submissions.svg')