The discussion revolves around a custom field not working in a Discourse plugin. Sanjay1 initially shares their code and asks for help. They later realize their mistake in understanding how custom fields work and clarify their understanding with the help of pfaffman and vinothkannans.
To make custom fields visible, vinothkannans suggests whitelisting them in the site settings. Sanjay1 asks for clarification, and vinothkannans explains the process.
vinothkannans explains that custom fields may contain sensitive user data, so they are not exposed by default. PoojaPatel asks about using custom fields to categorize users, and pfaffman suggests using the Data Explorer plugin.
vinothkannans helps Sanjay1 add a custom field to the Posts object using add_to_serializer. Sanjay1 then asks about storing a JSON object in a custom field and receives a solution from vinothkannans.
vinothkannans explains that it is possible to intercept a response from a POST request, modify the body, and add a custom field. Sanjay1 successfully adds a field but faces an issue with accessing params in add_to_serializer. vinothkannans clarifies that params are only accessible in controllers and suggests understanding the differences between serializers and controllers.
I am fairly new to discourse and I am attempting to add a customs field but I am not able to,
Could someone please help me.
My code
after_initialize do
module ::Foo
PLUGIN_NAME ||= -"discourse-myapi"
STORE_NAME ||= "replies".freeze
class Engine < ::Rails::Engine
engine_name PLUGIN_NAME
isolate_namespace Foo
end
end
require_dependency "application_controller"
class Foo::Example
class << self
def bump(id)
cf_time = Time.zone.now
DistributedMutex.synchronize("#{Foo::PLUGIN_NAME}-#{cf_time.iso8601}") do
user = User.find(id)
user.custom_fields['signature_url'] = cf_time
user.save!
return user
end
end
end
end
class Foo::BarController < ::ApplicationController
requires_plugin Foo::PLUGIN_NAME
def custom_field_test
begin
user = Foo::Example.bump(1)
render json: { user: user }
rescue StandardError => e
render_json_error e.message
end
end
end
Foo::Engine.routes.draw do'
get '/custom_field_test' => 'bar#custom_field_test'
end
Discourse::Application.routes.append do
mount ::Foo::Engine, at: '/myapiclass'
end
end
I am going to answer my own question here, since I kind of understand where I was making mistake in terms of my thinking process, and also a benefit of getting feedback from the rest of the team here, as well as for the benefit of new comers to custom_fields functionality in Discourse.
Basically I was making a mistake in thinking without investigation that after I create a custom field on User object by doing
user = User.find(1) user.custom_fields[“test_field”] = " X X X X" user.save
I was expecting the custom field to be created on the user object i.e. to become
custome_field_test_field
and I was doing:
user.custom_fields_test_field
But after investigating deeply, I found out that, custom_field is actually an object
user.custom_fields[“test_field”] = { }
and when I do
user.custom_fields[“test_field”] = " X X X X"
it appends it to the hash/object
Therefore it becomes
user.custom_fields = { “test_field”] = " X X X X" }
@pfaffman thanks for let me know about the necessary of adding importers for custom field I am looking into them,
On the second part of the question, do you know if Redis caches requests, when you call the DB from rails application ? because at the moment I am two distinct results, calling via the controller and directly to the database via rails console.
Anybody know how I can make the “custom_fields” on User visible ? at the moment when I fetch user object I am getting the custom_fields property is empty object/hash - {}.
But if I do user.custom_fields, I can see all the custom fields, however as part of the User object is empty.
Please refer to the code snippet above for more details.
For that you have to whitelist those custom fields in either public user custom fields or staff user custom fields site setting according to your need.
I am new to discourse and I am not sure, when you say - public user custom fields - if you are referring to the UI part of discourse, on JS or the actual Ruby code. could you please elaborate, or point me to an example.
I mean you have to add that custom field’s name in admin site setting at the URL /admin/site_settings/category/all_results?filter=public%20user%20custom%20fields like below
And I have another question about custom fields, I am not able to see the custom_field on Posts object, nor I can whitelist it on the ui admin page, can you help with this,
@vinothkannans Thanks for suggestion, and it’s working.
One more thing I would like to ask you is, I am trying to set an object as in a JSON object into the custom field, However, when I se it, is setting it as a string with character escapes, is there a way to handle this.
Last question, do you know if is possible in Discourse, to intercept a response from POST request, modify the body, e.g. add a custom field before sending to the client ?
