[API] Cleaner way to create a tag?

[jack2]

Right now, in order to create a tag with the API, I create a temporary topic with the new tag, then delete the temporary topic. Is there a cleaner way?

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I don’t know, but a slightly less painful solution would be to create a post in the staff category (where Assets for site design is) and just add the new tags there.

The reason is that you want to create a bunch of tags so that users can use them in the future, but your community doesn’t yet have posts with those tags?

[jack2]

Thanks @pfaffman.

@pfaffman

I don’t know, but a slightly less painful solution would be to create a post in the staff category (where Assets for site design is) and just add the new tags there.

You mean manually adding the new tag? Or is it possible to use the “Update a single topic” API to add a tag to an existing topic? But in that case I would have to store the topic id, which is painful…

@pfaffman

The reason is that you want to create a bunch of tags so that users can use them in the future, but your community doesn’t yet have posts with those tags?

I guess this would be a legit use case. But mine is less legit: I use tags to store metadata (object ids from an external app).

[riking (Kane York)]

@jack2

I guess this would be a legit use case. But mine is less legit: I use tags to store metadata (object ids from an external app).

Yeah, that’s not a good idea, especially if each tag is only used once.

You should either have a separate database mapping the external IDs to Discourse topic IDs, or write a plugin and use topic custom fields (this is a problem since there’s no existing mechanism to deliver these to the client, I think).

Another solution is to store the value in the post text.

[jack2]

Since there is a legit use case, I believe adding a “new tag” API in the future would be a plus.

I can feel the danger of using tags the way I do. But as I need to display, in Discourse, a list of the topics that relate to a specific external object, the “tags.show” route seems the only way…

[riking (Kane York)]

Well, what are the external objects? How many topics will one get? will a topic relate to multiple of these things?

You may be able to get away with using search.

[jack2]

The external objects are document subsections. One topic relates to one and only one subsection. A minimum guess is: 100 documents x 100 subsections per document = 10,000 subsections = 10,000 tags in a single Discourse instance. I know this is dangerous, but since I’m in the prototype phase, tags are good enough for me.

Now I didn’t think about the search page before… I’ve just done some tests, but sadly, the results are not formatted like a topic list (with the ‘Replies’, ‘Views’ and ‘Activity’ columns). I guess a “topics only” checkbox that turns the result page into a standard Discourse topic list would be exactly what I need.

[riking (Kane York)]

Consider not pre-creating that many topics - there’s often not much to discuss about the Bibliography. You can have a small service that takes a document & subsection ID and redirects you to either the existing topic or opens the composer pre-filled with the document link, subsection ID, etc.

title: Procedures for Smelling, section Keyboards
body: <https://link.to/document/1234#sec-26>

[write your text here]

lookup key: DISCUSS_1234_26

Then it polls /latest.json for new topics and checks them for the magic ID reference phrase I put in on the last line of the example.

[jack2]

Yes, I already have something like this. I don’t create the subsection tags beforehand when a document is created. I’ve changed the “tag not found” page of a subsection so that it looks like an empty topic list with a “New Topic” button at the top. When user clicks the button, I create the tag on the fly using the API and open the composer pre-filled with the generated tag.

[syl]

@jack2

Right now, in order to create a tag with the API, I create a temporary topic with the new tag, then delete the temporary topic. Is there a cleaner way?

Yes there is: create a tag group populated with the tag you want to create (see the API here).

[syl]

API を使用してタググループを作成することでタグを作成する上記の方法には、1 つの欠点があります。それは、管理者権限を持つ場合にのみ機能するということです。

[syl]

さらに、API を使用してタグを作成する別の方法があります（ただし、管理者のみが利用可能）：Upload Tags メニューで使用される未文書化の API /tags/upload.json。以下のように使用します：

const tags = ['tag1', 'tag2']
const file = new Blob([tags.join('\n')], { type: 'text/plain' })
const formData = new FormData()
formData.append('file', file)
$.ajax({
  type: 'POST',
  url: '/tags/upload.json',
  data: formData,
  contentType: false,
  processData: false
})

[SumOne]

タグが数千個になる予定ですが、この回避策（タグごとにグループを作成する方法）は依然として有効でしょうか？タググループはタグと同じくらい軽量でしょうか？

もしそうであれば、私の即座の課題は解決します。そうでない場合、（タグ1つに対してタグ＋タググループという重複を避けるため）別の方法を検討したいと考えています。

[syl]

@SumOne

タググループはタグと同じくらい柔軟ですか？

すみません、わかりません。

@SumOne

この回避策（タグごとにグループを作成する）をまだ使うべきでしょうか？

API は、1 回の操作で 1 つのグループ内に複数のタグを作成できることを覚えています。

[SumOne]

ありがとうございます。はい、同じグループ内で複数のタグを作成することは可能ですが、作成時のみです。更新はできますが、そのためにはグループを取得し、タグを追加してから再度送信する必要があります。追加用のエンドポイントが存在しないためです。

2つ目に提案いただいた、/tags/upload.json エンドポイントに関する件ですが、

アップロードボタンのインターフェースを見つけました。そこでは正常に動作する CSV ファイルを作成できました。しかし、Postman や Go（ご存じであれば csv.NewWriter を使用しました）では動作させることができません。

何かアイデアはありますか？

[syl]

@SumOne

でも、Postman や Golang ではうまく動作しません。
何かアイデアはありますか？

申し訳ありませんが、それらを使ってバロブを作成して投稿する方法がわかりません。

[SumOne]

やり方がわかりました。

必要であれば、私に連絡してください。ここには投稿しません。長いですし、コミュニティの 99.99% にはおそらく関係ないからです。