# Importing users from an external database
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [September 5, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754 "2016-09-05T21:35:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kgish](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kgish)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/1 "2016-09-05T21:35:05Z")
I have a list of users from an external database which i need to import into discourse and activate them. How should i do this?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2016, 10:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/2 "2016-09-05T22:19:09Z")
You could feed the emails into the invites tab on your user page.
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2016, 5:28am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/3 "2016-09-06T05:28:29Z")
And if you don’t want a one-off import, but a continuous “sync”, search for SSO 🙂
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### Author:  [@kgish](https://meta.discourse.org/u/kgish)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2016, 11:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/4 "2016-09-12T11:48:59Z")
For those interested, here’s how I did it:
```plaintext
desc "Import users from a CSV file"
task :import, [:csv_file] => [:environment] do |_, args|
cnt = 0
CSV.foreach(args[:csv_file], col_sep: ';', headers: true) do |new_user|
cnt = cnt + 1
new_user = define_user(new_user, cnt)
u = User.new({
username: new_user['username']
email: new_user['email'],
password: SecureRandom.hex,
name: new_user['name'],
title: new_user['title'],
approved: true,
approved_by_id: -1,
trust_level: 1
})
u.import_mode = true
u.groups = parse_user_groups new_user['groups']
begin
u.save!
rescue => e
puts "NOK|#{cnt}|#{new_user['name']}|#{new_user['username']}|#{new_user['email']}|#{new_user['groups']} => #{e.message}"
else
token = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("select * from email_tokens where user_id=#{u.id}")
puts "OK |#{cnt}|#{new_user['name']}|#{new_user['username']}|#{new_user['email']}|#{new_user['groups']}|#{token[0]['token']}"
end
end
```
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2019, 1:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/5 "2019-03-05T13:28:06Z")
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2019, 11:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-users-from-an-external-database/49754/6 "2019-03-06T11:27:51Z")