# How does Discourse handle the Read/Unread for users?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-handle-the-read-unread-for-users/214048
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [January 6, 2022, 1:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-handle-the-read-unread-for-users/214048 "2022-01-06T13:39:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nilox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nilox)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 1:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-handle-the-read-unread-for-users/214048/1 "2022-01-06T13:39:51Z")
Hey guys!
I’m currently learning coding and I’m wondering what is the schema or technique for read / unread posts in Discourse?
I’ve seen how SMF does it, through a combination of Mark Board Read, Mark All Read, and marked read when seen the last post.. etc.
How does Discourse handle this?
Thanks! =)
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2022, 2:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-handle-the-read-unread-for-users/214048/2 "2022-01-06T14:16:07Z")
It’s best to delve into the Source:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse](https://github.com/discourse/discourse)
Topic read state (by user) is tracked by the TopicUser model?:
>
(the data of which is stored in the Postgres DB).
You can interact with this on the rails console, from the discourse directory in dev, go `rails c`
then you can do something like `TopicUser.first` and look at the data …
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### Author:  [@nilox](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nilox)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2022, 9:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-handle-the-read-unread-for-users/214048/3 "2022-01-07T09:57:33Z")
Sweet. I see the schema right down there thanks!