4combinator
4combinator is a read-only interface for selected 4chan boards, featuring a Hacker News-inspired UI designed for a work safe browsing experience.
Description
4combinator is a read-only interface for selected 4chan boards, featuring a Hacker News-inspired UI designed for a work safe browsing experience.
This is an unofficial client that provides a simplified way to browse 4chan content. No account is required, and you cannot post or interact with the content.
It basically ports the concepts of 4chan to a Hacker News-inspired UI, threads become posts, replies become comments, and the rest of the content is the same. Images are hidden in the mainpage but can be viewed by hovering over them. This way one can browse /g/ even at the office without having to worry about people wondering why you are looking at an image board.
This is an unofficial client that provides a simplified way to browse 4chan content. No account is required, and you cannot post or interact with the content.
It basically ports the concepts of 4chan to a Hacker News-inspired UI, threads become posts, replies become comments, and the rest of the content is the same. Images are hidden in the mainpage but can be viewed by hovering over them. This way one can browse /g/ even at the office without having to worry about people wondering why you are looking at an image board.
Technologies
4combinator was created with Next, basing the project on the t3 stack with some modifications, I used the tRPC library to handle the backend as usual, I went with app router this time since I'm getting more comfortable with it. Used the 4chan API to fetch threads, posts and images from the boards.
The project was deployed with Vercel, as usual it was easy and fast since Next is the bread and butter of the platform. The database I went with something new, I used Turso for the database, it uses libsql which is a fork of sqlite. The experience so far has been great, coming out of mushare I had pretty much the same problems at the time of setting up the database but I already knew how to fix it so it was a breeze. The purpose of a database in this project is mainly to use it as a cache for the 4chan API, since the API is public and doesn't require any authentication the 4chan API kindly asks to not abuse the API and not make too many requests per minute so this way we can play fair with everyone accessing the service.
No authentication was needed since this is a read-only interface, the 4chan API is public and doesn't require any authentication either which made the development process quite straightforward.
The project was deployed with Vercel, as usual it was easy and fast since Next is the bread and butter of the platform. The database I went with something new, I used Turso for the database, it uses libsql which is a fork of sqlite. The experience so far has been great, coming out of mushare I had pretty much the same problems at the time of setting up the database but I already knew how to fix it so it was a breeze. The purpose of a database in this project is mainly to use it as a cache for the 4chan API, since the API is public and doesn't require any authentication the 4chan API kindly asks to not abuse the API and not make too many requests per minute so this way we can play fair with everyone accessing the service.
No authentication was needed since this is a read-only interface, the 4chan API is public and doesn't require any authentication either which made the development process quite straightforward.
Things Learned
Mostly UI design and copying the Hacker News design, I think I did a pretty good job at it and I'm happy with the result. The design is mobile friendly and works great, I'm happy with the outcome.
I could say I learned a bit about how to handle rate limiting and caching, I had to implement a caching system to avoid making too many requests to the 4chan API, which was a great but not too hard. So yeah, a quick project.
I could say I learned a bit about how to handle rate limiting and caching, I had to implement a caching system to avoid making too many requests to the 4chan API, which was a great but not too hard. So yeah, a quick project.
Things I Would Do Differently
Not much, it was simple enough to spin up in a weekend and I'm happy with the outcome.
Gallery
