I tried to reverse engineer the site by sending POST requests to “https://{hostUrl}/topics/timings” with content-type, csrf token, and user-agent. Here is what the body (json) looks like: payload = { "topic_id": topic_id, "topic_time": post_count * 60000, "timings": timings } It returns a status code of 200 but the read history never changes at https://{hostUrl}/u/USERNAME/activity/read I tried to look into this post but it wasn’t much help: [image] Mark specific posts as "read" through the API? Development Hello, I’m pulling posts through the discourse API. I’m using python for that. The request calls the following code (which makes a GET request essentially) and returns the .json similar to this post def topic_by_id(self, topic_id, **kwargs): return self._get("/t/{0}.json".format(topic_id), **kwargs) The posts returned have a 'read' flag. The posts I send are read=True, but for the posts I receive they are all marked as read=False, unless I actively log in to Discourse and read the… Here is a good amount of the code: def get_csrf(session): r = session.get(f"https://{hostUrl}/session/csrf.json") if r.status_code != 200: raise RuntimeError("Failed to get CSRF") data = r.json() if "csrf" not in data: raise RuntimeError("No CSRF in response") return data["csrf"] def load_topics(session, page): print(f"[Topics] Page {page}") r = session.get( f"https://{hostUrl}/latest.json?page={page}" ) if r.status_code != 200: return [] data = r.json() return [ { "id": t["id"], "posts_count": t["posts_count"] } for t in data["topic_list"]["topics"] ] def mark_post_as_read(session, topic_id, post_count): url = f"https://{hostUrl}/topics/timings" timings = { str(i): 60000 for i in range(1, post_count + 1) } payload = { "topic_id": topic_id, "topic_time": post_count * 60000, "timings": timings } csrf = get_csrf(session) r = session.post( url, json=payload, headers={ "X-CSRF-Token": csrf, "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0", "Content-Type": "application/json" } ) print(f"[Read] {topic_id} → {r.status_code}") if r.status_code != 200: print(r.text[:300]) def tab_worker(session): page = 1 while True: topics = load_topics(session, page) if not topics: break for t in topics: mark_post_as_read( session, t["id"], t["posts_count"] ) time.sleep(0.4) page += 1

This works: def load_topics(session, page): print(f"[Topics] Loading page {page}") r = session.get(f"https://{hostUrl}/latest.json?page={page}") if r.status_code != 200: return [] return [{"id": t["id"], "posts_count": t["posts_count"]} for t in r.json()["topic_list"]["topics"]] timings = { str(i): 60000 for i in range(1, post_count + 1) } payload = { "topic_id": topic_id, "topic_time": post_count * 60000, "timings": timings } # Use json=payload to send as application/json r = session.post(url, json=payload, headers = { "X-CSRF-Token": csrf, "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0", "X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest", "Content-Type": "application/json" } )

I’m bumping this because I still need the answer. Thanks

[image] kittenwater: "timings": timings What if you send this as a flat "timings[post_number]": duration? Does it work? If I send a request containing that payload: { "timings[1]": 10000, "topic_time": 10000, "topic_id": 6, } It updates the timing tables and the post is marked as read, and /activity/read is updated as well. Why are you trying to do that? What is the purpose?

[image] Canapin: What if you send this as a flat "timings[post_number]": duration? Does it work? It doesn’t seem to exactly work. Here is the code snippet which I modified. def mark_post_as_read(session, topic_id, post_count): url = f"https://{hostUrl}/topics/timings" payload = { "topic_id": topic_id, "topic_time": post_count * 60000 } for i in range(1, post_count): payload[f"timings[{i}]"] = 60000 csrf = get_csrf(session) r = session.post( url, json=payload, headers={ "X-CSRF-Token": csrf, "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0", "Content-Type": "application/json" } ) print(f"[Read] {topic_id} → {r.status_code}") if r.status_code != 200: print(r.text[:300]) It still returns 200 but isn’t updated. Thanks

The code looks fine, I’m not sure where the issue comes from. :confused: My guts tell me we are just missing something obvious somewhere :sweat_smile:

Thank you so MUCH!!! This finally works.

Actually, one more thing. This is pretty interesting! It DOES update at the post read history :white_check_mark: Posts read count increases :white_check_mark: BUT: Topic read count doesn’t increase :cross_mark: These are the 2 I’m talking about! [Screenshot 2026-02-05 at 11.12.14 PM] Pretty interesting.

I wouldn’t be surprised if those stats were updated by a regular sidekick job, for performance reasons. What’s your use case to update timings with a script?

[image] Canapin: I wouldn’t be surprised if those stats were updated by a regular sidekick job, for performance reasons. I can say with 100% certainty that this statement is true! The posts read has updated several times but the topics read hasn’t. Are they on different intervals? It’s been ~20 hours since and the posts read count keeps increasing but the topics read doesn’t. I just want to try to reverse engineer the endpoints! It’s cool. I think I should wait a bit before coming back and seeing if the values have changed

[image] kittenwater: I think I should wait a bit before coming back and seeing if the values have changed You can trigger the sidekiq job manually in /sidekiq/scheduler if you find which one it is :slight_smile:

Perhaps it’s Jobs::DirectoryRefreshDaily.

Mark posts in topic as "read'

Development

Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin) February 7, 2026, 10:45am 16

In his case you can’t. Being a regular user isn’t ideal to reverse-engineer the API.
If you can, try a local dev install or a production install on a cheap VPS (a 3-4$ server is alright), since Discourse doesn’t require a hostname or SMTP anymore.

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Mark posts in topic as "read'

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