# Is it possible to write a custom client other than a web browser?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-it-possible-to-write-a-custom-client-other-than-a-web-browser/51671>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [October 18, 2016, 5:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-it-possible-to-write-a-custom-client-other-than-a-web-browser/51671 "2016-10-18T05:34:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Samuel\_Crow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/samuel_crow/32/271155_2.png) [@Samuel\_Crow](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Samuel_Crow)\
**Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 5:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-it-possible-to-write-a-custom-client-other-than-a-web-browser/51671/1 "2016-10-18T05:34:58Z")

</div>

I would like to make a micro-sized lightweight forum-browser style client for directly interfacing with the ReST of a server-side forum.

Among the requirements are that the format not be ordinary HTML but XHTML, custom XML or JSON instead. In this way, I can use a simple library to parse the markup from the forum. Another less stringent requirement is that images be able to open on a full-screen display with only a shallow color-depth thumbnail to indicate its contents. CSS won’t be needed either because I will be replacing the customization with native GUI elements.

Will this require a plug-in? Is the Ruby on Rails portion of Discourse up to the task? Will I run into hard-coded limits?

One final note: I don’t have a Postgres SQL host right now so if I can’t do it I need to know so I can look at other ReST interfacing forum software that will work with my current host.

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-it-possible-to-write-a-custom-client-other-than-a-web-browser/51671)._