QA Wolf Take-Home Assignment — Hacker News Sort Validation

This project uses Playwright and Node.js to validate that the first 100 articles on Hacker News Newest are sorted from newest to oldest.

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Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Levitiku5/qa-wolf-assignment
   cd qa_wolf_take_home

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Install required browsers via Playwright:

   npx playwright install

   If you're on Linux and see missing library errors (e.g., libdbus-glib-1.so.2), install system dependencies:

   sudo apt install libdbus-glib-1-2    # Debian/Ubuntu

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How to Run the Script

node index.js

• The script will:

  • Open Chromium via Playwright
  • Navigate to the newest Hacker News page
  • Paginate through articles until 100 are collected
  • Validate that article IDs are strictly decreasing (newest to oldest)
  • Output a success/failure message in the terminal

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What This Script Does

• Uses page.$$eval to extract article item?id= links and parse their numeric IDs.

• Handles pagination by clicking the More button until at least 100 unique articles are collected.

• Once 100 articles are gathered:

  • It checks that the array of IDs is in strict descending order (i.e., each newer article has a higher ID).

• Outputs clear messaging in the terminal with the result.

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Limitations & Future Improvements

• Assumes article ID is a proxy for post time. While this holds true in practice on Hacker News, a more robust approach would validate against actual timestamps (not available directly).
• Does not currently validate the "X minutes ago" age indicators. This could be used as a secondary verification method.
• No CLI arguments or logging modes yet. It could be enhanced to allow flags like --verbose, --limit=200, or --report=html.
• HTML report output could make this suitable for CI pipelines or automated QA dashboards.