Compose a new pre-filled personal message via URL

**techAPJ** · September 2, 2018, 2:18pm

Discourse now supports composing a new (pre-filled) personal message via URL!

To compose a new pre-filled message, modify URL params like this:

http://discourse.example.com/new-message?username=techapj&title=message%20title&body=message%20body

This will open a composer window pre-filled with username, title and body.

Try it out live on try.discourse.org!

http://try.discourse.org/new-message?username=rudy&title=message%20title&body=message%20body

Want to compose a pre-filled topic instead? See: Compose a new pre-filled topic via URL

**techAPJ** · November 24, 2017, 10:52am

I just added support for composing a new pre-filled message for a group via URL! The URL will be:

https://meta.discourse.org/new-message?groupname=team&title=topic%20title&body=topic%20body`

Notice groupname param in above URL, this means that you want to create a new pre-filled message for a group (as opposed to username for composing a message for user).

**downey** · April 19, 2016, 3:18pm

How would someone create a URL to compose message to multiple recipients or multiple groups?

**codinghorror** · April 19, 2016, 4:41pm

Maybe @techapj can add support for comma (or semicolon) delimiting destinations here?

**codinghorror** · August 14, 2016, 1:58am

Is this still on your list @techapj as I think it makes sense. Commas are not allowed in usernames, either comma or semicolon should be supported for this.

**techAPJ** · August 14, 2016, 7:15pm

Yes, this feature is still on my list.

This got delayed because currently we are verifying

user exists and if current user can send PM to desired user
group exists and is mentionable

Now this needs to be verified for multiple users and groups. Will get to it this week.

**codinghorror** · August 14, 2016, 8:41pm

Actually you can push it back, if it is a lot of work there are other things we can do first.

**tobiaseigen** · August 22, 2016, 5:32pm

Thanks for creating this nifty feature - it’ll come in handy!

I noticed that selecting this URL will take you to the site homepage and open up the message composer. Much more friendly, methinks, would be to take you to the destination user profile.

**tobiaseigen** · August 23, 2016, 2:20pm

In addition, if you’re not logged in it takes you to the homepage and displays the popup login window. Or for SSO it redirects to the login page. More friendly would be to display a message e.g. “you need to log in first before you can send a message.”

Also - I wonder what would happen if you’re logged in but TL0 and not yet allowed to start new messages. I’ll test that today.

**Simon_Cossar** · August 23, 2016, 4:38pm

With sso you can llink to yourdomain.com/session/sso and then set the return path to create the private message. If the user is already logged in they will be redirected automatically to the url supplied by the return path. If they aren’t logged in they will be taken to the sso login page and then redirected to the return path url.

href="http://localhost:3000/session/sso?return_path=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A3000%2Fnew-message%3Fusername%3Dscossar%26title%3DInformation+requested+about+gentle+yoga+classes">

The return path will need to be url encoded. Here is some example code in php:

github.com

scossar/wp-discourse-shortcodes/blob/master/wp-discourse-shortcodes.php#L321


<?php
/**
* Plugin Name: WP Discourse Shortcodes
* Description: Extends the WP Discourse plugin to add Discourse content to your WordPress site
* Version: 0.23
* Author: scossar
* Text Domain: wpds
* Plugin URI: https://github.com/scossar/wp-discourse-shortcodes
*
* @package WPDiscourse\Shortcodes
*/


namespace WPDiscourse\Shortcodes;


use \WPDiscourse\Admin\OptionsPage as OptionsPage;
use \WPDiscourse\Admin\FormHelper as FormHelper;


define( 'WPDS_VERSION', '0.23' );


add_action( 'plugins_loaded', __NAMESPACE__ . '\\init' );
/**
* Initializes the plugin, checks that WPDiscourse exists before requiring plugin files.
*/
function init() {
	if ( class_exists( '\WPDiscourse\Discourse\Discourse' ) ) {


		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/formatter.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-shortcodes.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-link.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-prefilled-message.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-topics.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-groups.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/discourse-topic-formatter.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/shortcodes/discourse-topics-shortcode.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/shortcodes/discourse-groups-shortcode.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/shortcodes/discourse-link-shortcode.php' );
		require_once( __DIR__ . '/lib/shortcodes/discourse-prefilled-message-shortcode.php' );


		new DiscourseShortcodes();
		$topic_formatter   = new DiscourseTopicFormatter();
		$discourse_topics  = new DiscourseTopics( $topic_formatter );
		$discourse_link    = new DiscourseLink();
		$prefilled_message = new DiscoursePrefilledMessage( $discourse_link );
		$discourse_groups  = new DiscourseGroups( $discourse_link );
		new DiscourseLinkShortcode( $discourse_link );
		new DiscoursePrefilledMessageShortcode( $prefilled_message );
		new DiscourseTopicsShortcode( $discourse_topics );
		new DiscourseGroupsShortcode( $discourse_groups );


		if ( is_admin() ) {
			require_once( __DIR__ . '/admin/admin.php' );
			require_once( __DIR__ . '/admin/settings-validator.php' );


			$options_page = OptionsPage::get_instance();
			$form_helper  = FormHelper::get_instance();


			new SettingsValidator();
			new Admin( $options_page, $form_helper );
		}
	}
}

**tobiaseigen** · August 26, 2016, 6:56pm

This worked! Many thanks, @Simon_Cossar!

Now I just need to find a way to have it go to the member’s summary page and pop up the message composer instead of to /latest. @techAPJ any suggestion?

**Pad_Pors** · September 25, 2016, 8:55am

TL0 users can contact admins in the form of replying to welcome message. it would be great if contacting site admins via a pre-filled private message would be permitted even for TL0 users.

then as an admin one can make a simple “contact us” link.

**tobiaseigen** · September 25, 2016, 7:45pm

You could do this with a category configured to allow anonymous posting by email and to give access to only the team members who should receive and handle inquiries. It will additionally create staged accounts which is cool.

**Pad_Pors** · September 26, 2016, 5:31pm

I just found out about the staged users ability and yes, it’s a nice feature! thanks for the suggestion

a question regarding this method:

it’s like asking people to send an email to test@test.com in order to contact us. the only difference would be that we receive their response in the platform rather than our email.

isn’t it?

I’d like the users to be able to contact us via the platform itself.

**codinghorror** · October 21, 2016, 5:30am

**jomaxro** · March 6, 2019, 6:16pm

**kimardenmiller** · March 6, 2019, 6:16pm

Any way to open the Email Composer w/o having to fill in the user? e.g.

https://discourse.domain.org/new-message

vs. having to fill in a user

https://discourse.domain.org/new-message?username=user_name

Use-case is a simple bookmark to composing PMs.

And there is no way to PM a user starting from an email, like we can create a Topic post from email, correct?

**codinghorror** · March 7, 2019, 12:41am

Hmm, at least some form of the empty version should work @techapj

https://meta.discourse.org/new-message?username=

**techAPJ** · March 7, 2019, 6:29am

Okay, this is now done via:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/caef0a56d1948b94e9775093420850170b17f824

All of the below format will work now:

https://meta.discourse.org/new-message
https://meta.discourse.org/new-message?username=
https://meta.discourse.org/new-message?title=foo&body=bar

**kimardenmiller** · March 7, 2019, 7:36pm

Nice. Pulled from tests-passed, and it looks great!