[news-yc]

Or, by "id"? I looked, but I wasn't able to figure out, for example, how I'd get pg's top-level comment here from the id "2619846". I was able to find it with this search, but it requires a second-part to the "_id" that I don't know where to find: http://api.thriftdb.com/api.hnsearch.com/items/_search?q=&#3... (Trying to filter for "id" instead of "_id" throws an error, for some reason.)

[andres]

The `_id` attribute for each item is its submission id plus a signature. ThriftDB references objects by their unique `_id` attributes.

The `id` attribute on the other hand is an item's submission id. It's not indexed though so you can't do lookup by id.

[ars]

Well that explains why I failed at fetching an item by id, and I tried a whole bunch of different ways. You should really mention somewhere that the "id" referenced is an internal id, and not the HN id.

I would like to lookup items by HN id.

[milkshakes]

could you please index the submission ids? i can think of a few reasons this would be useful

[lt]

Exactly.

How do I find this comment through the API? How do I find its replies?

[andres]

Would you mind emailing me with your ideas? [e-mail]