Administrative Bulk Operations

[tshenry (Taylor)]

Below you will find a collection of bulk operations that can be initiated from the command line. You will need SSH access, so if you are a hosted customer, you will need to contact the Discourse team about running these commands. This topic is a wiki, so feel free to add or improve anything relevant.

Before working with the console it is extremely important that you have a recent backup. Mistakes can always happen!

First thing to do is enter your site’s container:

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app

Table of contents

• Change Topic Status (close, archive, unlist)
• Move subset of topics
• Delete subset of users
• Suspend a set of users based on criteria
• Export/Import all site settings
• Export/Import categories
• Set permissions for multiple categories
• Tag all topics based on a keyword
• Tag all topics within a category
• Move all topics with a specific tag to a single category
• Move all topics from one category to another
• Grant a badge to all group members
• Destructive rake tasks

Additional Guides:

• How do I set tag tracking level defaults historically
• How do I set category tracking level defaults historically
• Change ownership of all posts by a specific user
• Replace a string in all posts
• Edit a user setting for all Discourse users
• How to modify trust level for all users
• Apply auto-close to existing topics

Change topic status ↥

---

Before running the following commands, run rails c to enter the console.

• Unlist all topics within a category (excludes post action)

  You can replace visible with closed or archived and adjust the true/false values as needed

  cat_id = Category.find_by_slug('admins').id
  Topic.where(category_id: cat_id, visible: true).update_all(visible: false)
  

• Unlist all topics within a category (includes post action)

  cat_id = Category.find_by_slug("admins").id
  Topic.where(category_id: cat_id, visible: true).find_each do |topic| 
    topic.update_status('visible', false, Discourse.system_user)
  end
  

• Close all topics created before a specified date (includes post action)

  Topic.where(closed: false).where("created_at < '2015-01-01'").find_each do |topic| 
    topic.update_status('closed', true, Discourse.system_user)
  end
  

Moving topics ↥

---

Move a collection of topics from one category to another

rails c
topic_ids = [12,16,29]
cat_to = Category.find_by_slug('faq')
Topic.where(id: topic_ids).update_all(category_id: cat_to.id)
Category.update_stats

Delete subset of users ↥

---

Delete users that have never posted and have not visited since a specified date

rails c
User.joins(:user_stat).where("user_stats.post_count = 0 AND previous_visit_at <= '2016-05-20'::timestamp").destroy_all

Suspend a set of users based on criteria↥

---

Set who will be logged as suspending the users

rails c
logger = StaffActionLogger.new(User.find_by(username_lower: "tshenry"))

Create a suspension timeframe and reason

suspend_till = DateTime.new(2057,12,31)
reason = 'Completed Course'

In this example, our user criteria will be group membership.

target_group = Group.find_by_name("summer_students")
users = User.joins(:group_users).where(group_users: {group_id: target_group.id})

Suspend each user based on the values established above:

users.each do |u|
  u.suspended_till = suspend_till
  u.suspended_at = DateTime.now
  u.save!

  logger.log_user_suspend(u,reason)
end

Export/Import all site settings ↥

---

To simply print out all of the settings that have been changed on your site, run:

rake site_settings:export

If you want to export the settings to a file:

rake site_settings:export > saved_settings.yml

If you want to import settings from a file:

rake site_settings:import < saved_settings.yml

Export/Import categories ↥

---

There are two options for exporting and one method to handle importing.

Export a set of complete categories

First get a list of your category IDs:

rails c
Category.all.pluck("id", "name")
exit

Then space-separate the category IDs in the export rake task. For example:

rake export:categories["12 6"]

Export your site’s category structure

This is essentially copying the “skeleton” of your Discourse site. It includes every category along with any groups associated with existing category permissions. It does not include topics:

rake export:category_structure

If you want the category structure along with any groups associated with the category permissions and any members of those groups:

rake export:category_structure[true]

Importing a category file

Only import to a fresh Discourse site, or one that does not have existing categories with the same name.

Use the exported file’s name like the example below:

rake import:file["category-export-2019-05-16-052430.json"]

Set permissions for multiple categories ↥

---

Note that this will remove any existing access restrictions you have set up for the categories involved. Make sure to include all of the relevant permissions.

1. Get a list of categories along with their IDs

   rails c
   Category.all.pluck("name", "id")
   

2. Create an array with the category IDs you wish to target.

   category_ids = [6,7,8,10]
   

3. Change the permissions. The set_permissions function can utilize the following parameters: :full, :create_post, :readonly

   • A single permission. For example, making a set of categories staff only:

     Category.where(id: category_ids).find_each do |category| 
      category.set_permissions(:staff => :full)
      category.save
     end
     

   • Multiple permissions. For example, making a set of categories read-only for normal users:

     Category.where(id: category_ids).find_each do |category| 
       category.set_permissions(:everyone => :readonly, :staff => :full)
       category.save
     end
     

   • User group permissions. For example giving one group full permissions and another group read-only for a set of categories:

     artists_group = Group.find_by_name("artists")
     buyers_group = Group.find_by_name("buyers")
     Category.where(id: category_ids).find_each do |category| 
       category.set_permissions(artists_group.id => :full, buyers_group.id => :readonly)
       category.save
     end
     

Bulk Tag All Topics Based on a Keyword ↥

The following script will allow you to tag topics based on the presence of a keyword in the topic title or its posts. Start by creating an array of keywords:

rails c
keywords = ['apples','oranges']

Next we need to define a method:

def tag_by_keyword(word, tag_name)
  tag = Tag.find_by_name(tag_name) || Tag.create(name: tag_name)
  keyword_topics = Topic.joins(:posts).where("topics.title ~* :keyword or posts.raw ~* :keyword", keyword: "\\y#{word}\\y").distinct

  keyword_topics.each do |topic|
    if topic.tags.exclude?(tag)
      topic.tags << tag
    end
  end
end

And finally run each keyword through the method. The following with tag each relevant topic with a tag called “fruit”:

keywords.each { |word| tag_by_keyword(word, 'fruit') }

Bulk Tag All Topics Within a Category ↥

---

Template: rake tags:bulk_tag_category["<tag>|<tag>",<category_id>]
This would be particularly useful when trying to convert a category to a tag

rails c
Category.find_by_slug('support').id
exit
rake tags:bulk_tag_category["support",6]

Move all topics with a specific tag to a single category ↥

When trying to restructure your Discourse site, you may find that you want to move a collection of topics without triggering any notifications. One way to do this is to create a temporary tag, apply the tag to appropriate topics, move the topics to a specific category using the code below, then finally delete the temporary tag.

Get the tag and destination category.

rails c
tag = Tag.find_by_name("tutorial")
cat_to = Category.find_by_slug('guides')

Move the tagged topics to the destination category.

Topic.joins(:topic_tags).where("topic_tags.tag_id = ?", tag.id).update_all(category_id: cat_to.id)

Update the topic counts of the affected categories.

Category.update_stats

Move all topics from one category to another ↥

---

Find the category IDs using the rails console:

rails c
Category.find_by_slug('support').id
Category.find_by_slug('faq').id
exit

The first value is the starting category ID and the second is the destination category ID.

rake categories:move_topics[15,6]

Grant a badge to all group members ↥

---

Grant a badge to all users that belong to a specific group. The first value is the group ID and the second is the badge ID.

rails c
Group.find_by_name("event_participants").id
Badge.find_by_name("event_badge").id
exit
rake groups:grant_badge[42,102]

Destructive rake tasks ↥

---

Delete entire categories

The following will allow you to destroy multiple categories, along with any subcategories and topics that belong to those categories.

Print out a list of category IDs

rake categories:list

Destroy a set of categories based on their ID

rake destroy:categories[10,11,12,18,30]

Delete all topics in a category

Deleting all topics in a category

To delete all topics from a category, you will need access SSH access to your server. If you use managed Discourse hosting, get in touch with your provider and ask them to help. If you run your own server, here are the steps you need to take to delete all topics in a category: This is a destructive action. Make sure to back up your forum before continuing Find the “slug” of your category. This is the name of category used in the URL. SSH into the server cd /var/discourse …

Remove all private messages

rake destroy:private_messages

Destroy all groups

rake destroy:groups

Destroy all non-admin users

rake destroy:users

Destroy site stats

rake destroy:stats

Anonymize all users except staff

rake users:anonymize_all

[pihentagy]

rake categories:move_topics[15,6]

rake groups:grant_badge[42,102]

rake tags:bulk_tag_category[“support”,6]

I have no such rake tasks. How is that possible?

[tshenry (Taylor)]

Have you tried running them, or are you just not finding them when you run rake --tasks? I checked and those tasks do not currently have descriptions, so they will fail to show up on that list. You can still run them, however.

[pihentagy]

I actually tried one of them (and reported the others based on rake --tasks). But now I double checked, and the error was in the usage of parameters. The task actually exists.

Sorry for the noise.

How can I list all the rake tasks?

[tshenry (Taylor)]

No worries. You can list them all with rake -AT