A Simple Hacker News Scraper

simpleScraper.js

//Include our Libraries!
var request = require('request');
var cheerio = require('cheerio');

//Request will send our web request to Hacker News
request('https://news.ycombinator.com', function (error, response, body) {

//continue with our scraper if there's no errors
  if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
  
    //lets cheerio parse our web response, and hand us pretty nodes!
    //It adds it all to the dolla sign variable, so we can use it just like jQuery!!!
    var $ = cheerio.load(body);
    
    //for each post...
    $('span.comhead').each(function(i, element){
    
      //format all our new information!!!
      var a = $(this).prev();
      var data = {
        rank: parseInt(a.parent().parent().text()),
        title: a.text(),
        url: a.attr('href')
      };
      console.log(data);
    });
  }
});