Virtually any action that can be performed through the Discourse user interface can also be triggered with the Discourse API. For a general overview of how to find the correct API request for an action, see Reverse engineer the Discourse API.
To run a Data Explorer query from the API, you need to make a POST request to /admin/plugins/explorer/queries/<query-id>/run. You can find the a Data Explorer query’s ID by visiting the query on your site and getting the value of the id parameter that you’ll see in your browser’s address bar.
This example query has an ID of 20 on my site. It returns a list of topics, ordered by views, for a given date:
--[params]
-- date :viewed_at
SELECT
topic_id,
COUNT(1) AS views_for_date
FROM topic_views
WHERE viewed_at = :viewed_at
GROUP BY topic_id
ORDER BY views_for_date DESC
This query can be run from a terminal with:
curl -X POST "https://discourse.example.com/admin/plugins/explorer/queries/20/run" \
-H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data;" \
-H "Api-Key: <your_all_users_api_key>" \
-H "Api-Username: system" \
-F 'params={"viewed_at":"2019-06-10"}'
You will need to substitute your site’s base URL, query ID, and All Users API key into the example.
Handling queries that return over 1000 rows
The
limit=ALLsupport for CSV exports has been removed, but should still work for JSON exports.
By default, the Data Explorer plugin returns a maximum of 1000 rows. You can bypass this limit by adding a limit=ALL parameter to the request. The query below will generate 10000 rows.
SELECT
*
FROM generate_series(1, 10000)
On my site, the query’s ID is 26. Here’s how to get all the query’s rows:
curl -X POST "https://discourse.example.com/admin/plugins/explorer/queries/26/run" \
-H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data;" \
-H "Api-Key: <your_all_users_api_key>" \
-H "Api-Username: system" \
-F "limit=ALL"
Paginating the results
For a query that returns a very large data set, you can paginate the results. Given this example query (it has an id of 27 on my site):
--[params]
-- integer :limit = 100
-- integer :page = 0
SELECT
*
FROM generate_series(1, 10000)
OFFSET :page * :limit
LIMIT :limit
you can return the first 100 rows with
curl -X POST "https://discourse.example.com/admin/plugins/explorer/queries/27/run" \
-H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data;" \
-H "Api-Key: <your_all_users_api_key>" \
-H "Api-Username: system" \
-F 'params={"page":"0"}'
You can keep incrementing the value of the page parameter until the result_count that is returned is 0.
Removing relations data from the results
When Data Explorer queries are run through the user interface, a relations object is added to the results. This data is used for rendering the user in UI results, but you are unlikely to need it when running queries via the API. To remove that data from the results, pass a download=true parameter with your request:
curl -X POST "https://discourse.example.com/admin/plugins/explorer/queries/27/run" \
-H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data;" \
-H "Api-Key: <your_all_users_api_key>" \
-H "Api-Username: system" \
-F 'params={"page":"0"}' \
-F "download=true"
API authentication
Details about generating an API key for the requests can be found here: Create and configure an API key. If the API key is only going to be used to run Data Explorer queries, select “Granular” from the Scope drop down, then select the “run queries” scope.
Common Questions
Is there any api endpoint I can use to get the list of reports and the ID numbers? I want to build a dropdown with the list in it?
Yes, you can make an authenticated GET request to /admin/plugins/explorer/queries.json to get a list of all queries on the site.
Is it possible to send parameters with the post request?
Yes, the first code example in the OP should give you what you are looking for. It passes a viewed_at parameter, but a similar approach would work with a category_id parameter.
Additional Resources
This document is version controlled - suggest changes on github.
Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-25T18:19:22Z
Last checked by @JamTestOne 2024-05-25T18:21:16Z
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