# Allow API use by regular users, not just admins

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-api-use-by-regular-users-not-just-admins/254724>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** rest-api\
**Created:** [February 10, 2023, 2:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-api-use-by-regular-users-not-just-admins/254724 "2023-02-10T02:14:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jidanni](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jidanni/32/291938_2.png) [@jidanni](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jidanni)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2023, 2:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-api-use-by-regular-users-not-just-admins/254724/1 "2023-02-10T02:14:35Z")

</div>

[Reverse engineer the Discourse API](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reverse-engineer-the-discourse-api/20576) says

> Anything you can do on the site you can also do using the JSON api.

Alas, [https://docs.discourse.org/](https://docs.discourse.org/)

> Some endpoints do not require any authentication, pretty much anything else will require you to be authenticated. To become authenticated you will need to create an API Key from the **admin panel**.

That’s too bad, because there are a lot of legitimate uses of the API  
that regular users could make use of, not just admins.

E.g., a monthly cronjob a user might set up to download his  
preferences.json instead of clicking Download in Preferences  
([Backup/export/import Preferences](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-export-import-preferences/254597)).

I am saying that a change in the source code is needed, so soon users all over the world will be able to access the API of the local Discourse they are using, to get their personal data, etc.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/allow-api-use-by-regular-users-not-just-admins/254724)._