When I use the API to get the Discourse user object, it works fine, but I don’t see the external_id included in there. If I have a Discourse user ID or username, how can I get the external_id from that?
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Aha - I was calling /users/blake.erickson.json (no /admin) which also returns a user object, but without single_sign_on_record.
Hey, why is it that the /users/ endpoint will take (only?) a username, but if you want to get a user by their Discourse ID, then it’s /admin/users/:id.json? Just quirks of the API design?
Further weirdness: if I retrieve a user by their external_id, calling /users/by-external/:id.json, then I don’t get the single_sign_on_record
So the API has some quirks… sometimes a user object has the single_sign_on_record properties, sometimes it doesn’t 
By design the admin endpoint will return more data than the non-admin endpoint. Yes, they are both fetching “user” records, but it would be super bad if the /user/... endpoint that regular users can call returned the same thing as /admin/user/....
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Aha, I didn’t realize the /user endpoint would be available to individual users. I forgot that there is such a thing as User API keys.
I keep getting thrown by inconsistencies. Right now, if I want single_sign_on_record, I have to know the Discourse user ID (/admin/users/:username.json doesn’t work)… but most other API calls seem to require the username (like /users/:username.json).
And then there are separate API endoints that are very similar and seem almost identical but return different results, i.e. /admin/users gives me single_sign_on_record data for the user, but calling just /users/ does not.
None of this is a big deal, I’m figuring it out as I go… once I get further along, I might see if I can tweak the docs a bit and make some of this more clear.
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The distinction here comes from the fact that the endpoints return the data needed to render the pages in the UI. Take a look here:
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Sure, I totally get it-- and I’ve been using that trick to monitor all those XHR requests. It’s all good. It’s just… inconsistent. But I am endlessly grateful that Discourse has such a strong API!
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