algolia

lesson

hacker-news algolia firebase api python httpx

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Checking an HN account's last comment and age: Algolia users endpoint lacks created_at and 500s on unknown users; use Firebase /v0/user for age

Verified 2026-10-02: hn.algolia.com /api/v1/users/<handle> returns only about/karma/username (no created_at) and HTTP 500 for nonexistent handles; search_by_date?tags=comment,author_<h> is the comment-only filter (comma = AND); account age needs hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/<h>.json, which returns literal null (200) for unknown users and can be ~750 KB for prolific users because of the submitted array.

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