Hacker News is a popular website among entrepreneurs and developers. It features content focused on computer science and entrepreneurship.
The simple layout of Hacker News may suit certain individuals. However, if you desire a more appealing and personalized version, you can utilize helpful APIs to create your own customized Hacker News experience. Also, building the Hacker News clone can help you solidify your React skills.
Setting Up the Project and Development Server
The code used in this project is available in aGitHub repositoryand is free for you to use under the MIT license.
For styling, copy the contents of theindex.cssfile from the repository and paste them into your ownindex.cssfile. If you want to have a look at a live version of this project, you may check out thisdemo.
The packages needed for this project include:
Open up the terminal and run:
you may also use theNode Package Manager (NPM)if you prefer it over yarn. The command above should use the Vite build tool to scaffold a basic project. Name your project and when prompted for the framework, chooseReactand set the variant toJavaScript.
Nowcdinto the project folder and install the packages mentioned earlier by running the following commands in the terminal:
After installing all the packages and starting the development server, open the project in any code editor and create three folders in thesrcfolder namely:components,hooks, andpages.
In thecomponentsfolder, add two filesComments.jsxandNavbar.jsx. In thehooksfolder, add one fileuseFetch.jsx. Then in thepagesfolder, add two filesListPage.jsxandPostPage.jsx.
Delete theApp.cssfile and replace the contents of themain.jsxfile with the following:
In theApp.jsxfile, remove all the boilerplate code and modify the file such that you only have the functional component remaining:
Import the necessary modules:
In the React fragment, add theRoutescomponents with threeRoutechild components with paths:/,/:type, and/item/:idrespectively.
Creating the useFetch Custom Hook
This project uses two APIs. The first API is responsible for fetching the list of posts in a given category (type), while the second API is the Algolia API which is responsible for fetching a particular post and its comments.
Open theuseFetch.jsxfile, define the hook as a default export and import theuseStateanduseEffecthooks.
Define three state variables namely:data,error, andloading, with their respective setter functions.
Then, add auseEffecthook with the dependencies:idandtype.
Next in the callback function, add the functionfetchData()to fetch the data from the appropriate APIs. If the parameter passed istype, use the first API. Otherwise, use the second API.
Finally, return theloading,error, anddatastate variables as an object.
Rendering the List of Posts Depending on the Requested Category
Whenever the user navigates to/or/:type, React should render theListPagecomponent. To implement this functionality, first, import the necessary modules:
Then, define the functional component and then assign the dynamic parameter,typeto thetypevariable. If the dynamic parameter is not available, set thetypevariable tonews. Then, call theuseFetchhook.
Next, return the appropriate JSX code depending on which one of theloading,error, ordatavariables is true.
Creating the PostPage Component
First, import the appropriate modules and components, then define the default functional component, assign theiddynamic parameter to theidvariable and, call theuseFetchhook. ensure you destructure the response.
And just like with theListPagecomponent, render the appropriate JSX based on the state of the following variables:loading,error, anddata.
Rendering the Comments Section With Nested Replies
Import theparsemodule and themomentmodule. Define the default functional componentCommentsthat takes in thecommentsDataarray as a prop, traverses through the arrays, and renders aNodecomponent for each element.
Next, define theNodefunctional component right under theCommentscomponent. TheNodecomponent renders the comment, metadata, and replies to each comment (if any) by recursively rendering itself.
In the code block above,parseis responsible for parsing the HTML stored incommentData.text, whilemomentis responsible for parsing the comment time and returning the relative time using thefromNow()method.
Creating the Navbar Component
Open theNavbar.jsxfile and import theNavLinkmodule from thereact-router-dommodule. Finally, define the functional component and return a parentnavelement with fiveNavLinkelements pointing to the appropriate categories (or types).
Congrats! You have just built your own front-end client for Hacker News.
Solidify Your React Skills by Building Clone Application
Building a Hacker News clone with React can help solidify your React skills and provide a practical Single Page Application to work on. There are many ways you could take things further. For example, you could add the ability to search for posts and users to the app.
Rather than trying to build your own router from scratch, it is better to use a tool built by professionals who are dedicated to making it easier to create SPAs.
