Creating a link to start a new topic with pre-filled information

Documentation Using Discourse
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:bookmark: This documentation explains how to create a link that starts a new topic in Discourse with pre-filled information.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: All users

Sometimes, you may want to provide users with a link that initiates a new topic composer with certain fields pre-filled. This can be useful for various use cases including bug report templates, feature requests, or standardized posts.

Constructing the URL

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

https://discourse.example.com/new-topic?title=topic%20title&body=topic%20body&category=category/subcategory&tags=email,planned

This will open composer window pre filled with topic title, body, category and tags.

Breaking down the link / URL to show the available options, we have:

  • Base URL: https://discourse.example.com/new-topic
  • Topic title: title=topic%20title
  • Body: body=topic%20body
  • The category and subcategory separated by a slash / if you want to include them: category=category/subcategory
  • The tags separated by comma(s) , if you want to include multiple tags: tags=email,planned
  • The ? URL operator to add the different options

You can try this here on Meta:

https://meta.discourse.org/new-topic?title=topic%20title&body=topic%20body&category=support/wordpress&tags=wordpress

Also, instead of providing category/subcategory name, you can also specify a numeric category_id, like:

https://meta.discourse.org/new-topic?title=topic%20title&body=topic%20body&category_id=3&tags=wordpress

This feature also supports “Start a topic by pasting a link (like Reddit)”, provided that the body is not present.
:information_source: The URL must be URL encoded for the link to work.
For example, to create a topic with the following URL https://www.xkcd.com/556, the link will be:

https://meta.discourse.org/new-topic?title=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.xkcd.com%2F556

Best practices

  • In general, if you have a lot of text to add, you can use w3Schools’s HTML URL Encoding Reference to find what text characters are encoded as in the URL, there is a text to URL converter in the Try It Yourself section in the page linked above in this paragraph.
  • Ensure that the pre-filled information is clear and structured to help users understand what to do.
  • If you’re not sure about the category ID, you can verify it by inspecting the category URL or by checking the category settings in your Discourse instance.
  • Always URL encode the parameters to avoid issues with special characters.
  • Test the pre-filled links to ensure they work as expected in your Discourse instance.

Additional Resources

Last edited by @hugh 2024-06-28T02:53:56Z

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