ArbitraryCounter
Web and SaaS
counting api
SHOW HN2013
How HN took it
2 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 9 critical, out of 17 comments about the project. Thread score -0.34.
Design: 1 for, 4 againstIdea: 1 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Simple, does one thing well
From 1 comment
I love simple api's like this. Its kind of the same mental model I keep around http://jsonip.com. A simple service that does one thing really well. Its been working well and has…
geuis on HN
Objections
GET requests should not modify state; incrementing should use POST
From 3 comments
Incrementing or decrementing a counter is neither side-effect-free nor idempotent, and GET should generally be both, so you really shouldn't use GET for those operations. [1]…
dragonwriter on HNGET should never modify data. I would recommend changing that to a POST before something indexes it and decides to crawl it every 5 minutes. See here for more reasons:…
pwf on HNPerhaps POST requests would be more appropriate for incrementing/decrementing? GET's may be either cached(skipped) or duplicated for various reasons, resulting in incorrect counts.
PeterisP on HN
Public URLs let anyone change the counter
From 2 comments
> All URLs are public. We recommend using a unique group name to avoid collisions with other users. So anyone can increment your counter without you knowing? Seems like this…
egonschiele on HNThis would be an example of security through obscurity.
egonschiele on HN
Too trivial to need an external API
From 3 comments
Can someone explain how counters can be so hard to implement ourselves that we need to use this?
ankurpatel on HN"There's an API for that" is the new "there's an app for that".
frankcaron on HNYep. I understand this is just a little toy thing, but people are really trying to start businesses off of "APIs" that do not much more than OP's. The whole point of an API is…
meowface on HN
Requests
Allow increment and decrement by amounts other than one
From 1 comment
I think you should be able to incr/decr by more than 1. Maybe allow http://arbitrarycounter.com/vb/fruit/apples+N where N can be any integer > 0
Jake232 on HN
Add a generate GUID option for group names
From 1 comment
I like the flexibility, but I would suggest you add a "generate GUID" button when choosing the group name in case the user does want a random URL, which seems quite likely.
benoits on HN
Questions
Why is this needed when counters are easy to implement
From 1 comment
Can someone explain how counters can be so hard to implement ourselves that we need to use this?
ankurpatel on HN
Alternatives named
Running a database
From 1 comment
The idea was to make something easier than booting up a database. Personally, I just needed a semi-persistent count that I could discard later. This fit the bill for me, and…
dustyreagan on HN
Google Analytics and Mixpanel
From 1 comment
I believe most anayltics platforms use/support GET, e.g. google analytics, mixpanel etc. If you limit yourself to use only POST, you will limit users from using your tool in…
tszming on HN