Access via Discourse API, key and/or user rejected

dev
1

As a moderator, I’d like to use the API for a discourse forum. Normally it was activated and I manage to get a API key. I used this script:

I manage to retrieve a key which is 32 characters long (is that right?), and in the security settings of my account, the app shows with these permissions:

Read all
Write all
Live updates
Push notifications to external services
Read and clear notifications
Read user session info
Create a one-time login token

That looks quite good. However, when I try to access through a script with:

from pydiscourse import DiscourseClient

client = DiscourseClient(
        'https://forum.example.com',
        api_username='tflidd',
        api_key='388b79103056fede1d3223dae032df99')

client.user("tflidd")

It is a python library, so I suppose it should work. The api_key has this specific format, it is not the actual key. I get the error that either the username or the api key are not valid.

Do I use my username or the app name?
Is the API key at least the right format, perhaps decrypting something went wrong?

If I use curl like here (Discourse-user-notes API - #4 by codetricity):

curl https://forum.example.com/t/95783.json\ -H 'Api-Key: 388b79103056fede1d3223dae032df99'\ -H 'Api-Username: tflidd'

I get also an error:
{"errors":["You are not permitted to view the requested resource. The API username or key is invalid."],"error_type":"invalid_access"}

If I open the same URL with the json in my browser where I am logged in the web browser shows the right json object. So the topic exists and I have permissions to access it (this was even a public one).

I am just moderator, no direct admin access. I could ask for more info from the logs, if you have pointers what to look for.

In case it matters, the installed version is: 3.2.0.beta4-dev

2

The DiscourseClient python library is designed to work with an Admin API key (Admin → API).
What you generate from generate_api_key is a Client API key.

You need to pass API-User-Key and API-User-Username headers instead.
For example:

curl https://forum.example.com/t/95783.json -H 'Api-User-Key: 388b79103056fede1d3223dae032df99' -H 'Api-User-Username: tflidd'`
3

:+1: this works, you don’t know how much time I spent on this.

But the API endpoints are the same described here
https://docs.discourse.org/
?

(if yes, it would be great to mention not only how to authenticate with the admin API key but also mention the client API key)

For the pydiscourse client, there is a hacky workaround to use a different header:

from pydiscourse import DiscourseClient

client = DiscourseClient(
        'https://forum.example.com',
        api_username='tflidd',
        api_key='388b79103056fede1d3223dae032df99')

headers = {
            "Accept": "application/json; charset=utf-8",
            "User-Api-Key": '388b79103056fede1d3223dae032df99',
            "User-Api-Username": 'tflidd',
        }

slug = "abc"
topic_id = 1234

client.topic(slug=slug, topic_id=topic_id, override_request_kwargs=override_request_kwargs)
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