/lobsters/stories

POST /api/lobsters/stories

Price: 10 credits

Get one Lobsters story by its short id: title, submitted link, submitter, score, tags, the submission text, and every comment on it with author, score, markdown and HTML body, nesting depth and parent comment

How to use it

One call returns the story and its whole comment tree, so never page comments — `comments` is flat and ordered for display, with `depth` and `parent_comment_id` carrying the nesting. `comment_count` and the length of `comments` legitimately differ, because deleted and moderated comments stay in the array but are excluded from the count; read `is_deleted` and `is_moderated` rather than trusting either number alone. `link_url` is empty on a self-post, where the content is in `description`.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• story string required — Lobsters story short id, or any lobste.rs story URL (examples: "rdhsu9", "https://lobste.rs/s/rdhsu9", "https://lobste.rs/s/rdhsu9/i_don_t_want_interact"; minLength: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "LobstersStory")
• id string required
• url string nullable
• comments_url string nullable
• link_url string nullable
• created_at integer nullable
• score integer nullable
• flag_count integer nullable
• comment_count integer nullable
• description string nullable
• description_html string nullable
• author string nullable
• author_url string nullable
• is_author_submission boolean nullable
• tags array (default: [])
• comments array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "LobstersComment")
  • id string required
  • url string nullable
  • story_url string nullable
  • story_id string nullable
  • parent_comment_id string nullable
  • created_at integer nullable
  • updated_at integer nullable
  • depth integer nullable
  • score integer nullable
  • flag_count integer nullable
  • is_deleted boolean nullable
  • is_moderated boolean nullable
  • text string nullable
  • text_html string nullable
  • author string nullable
  • author_url string nullable

Errors

• 422 — story is not a Lobsters short id or story URL Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — No story with that short id Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.