# Get user by e-mail
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831
**Category:** Development
**Tags:** rest-api
**Created:** [February 17, 2020, 7:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831 "2020-02-17T19:13:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dm.linov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dm.linov)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 7:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/1 "2020-02-17T19:13:39Z")
We are creating users and topics via API. We need to check if a user with such email had been created before. If yes, then we create a topic from the existing user.
So I need an API call “get username by email, if any”. How can I do that? I only found the reverse one.
There’s a link mentioned in several topics, that might have the answer, but it’s broken.
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/api-best-way-to-get-user-details-by-email/20806/10](https://meta.discourse.org/t/api-best-way-to-get-user-details-by-email/20806/10)
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 7:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/2 "2020-02-17T19:52:55Z")
That is a bit of a privacy violation so don’t expect it to be easy.
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### Author:  [@dm.linov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dm.linov)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 7:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/3 "2020-02-17T19:58:29Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> That is a bit of a privacy violation
Why? The admin of the forum can see search user by email via the web interface, what’s the difference if he does the same via API?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 7:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/4 "2020-02-17T19:59:32Z")
Sure if you use an admin api key that should work.
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### Author:  [@dm.linov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dm.linov)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 8:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/5 "2020-02-17T20:01:24Z")
That’s exactly my question. There’s a “Get a single user by username” call in the API docs, but how do I get a single user by email?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/6 "2020-02-17T20:05:51Z")
Follow the method here since you are an admin and know how to look users up by email address, yes?
> [@Reverse engineer the Discourse API](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-reverse-engineer-the-discourse-api/20576):
>
> Discourse is backed by a complete JSON api. Anything you can do on the site you can also do using the JSON api. The API is documented at [docs.discourse.org](https://docs.discourse.org). You can also use the [discourse\_api](https://github.com/discourse/discourse_api) Ruby gem as a client library. However, not every endpoint is documented. To determine how to do something with the JSON API here are some steps you can follow. Example: recategorize a topic. Go to a topic and start editing a category: Open Chrome dev tools, switch to the Network tab, select …
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### Author:  [@dm.linov](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dm.linov)
#### Post date: [February 17, 2020, 8:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/7 "2020-02-17T20:14:29Z")
Got it, thank you!
Posting it here for anyone else who might need it.
`[discourse_url]/admin/users/list/active.json?filter=[email_name]%40[email_domain]&show_emails=false&order=&ascending=&page=1`
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2020, 8:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/get-user-by-e-mail/141831/8 "2020-03-18T20:14:39Z")
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