Need Help updating profile info via API

[Earnie_Baird]

I’ve found a few examples in these forums of updating user info via the API but can’t get it to work. I’m a junior developer so maybe I’m missing something obvious.

First I tried getting this example to work:
curl -X PUT -d 'name=new name’ -L 'https://mysite.com/users/user12345.json?api_key=mykey&api_username=username'

but I get [“BAD CSRF”] so I tried this:

curl -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: multipart/form-data" \
  -H "Api-Key: mykey" \
  -H "Api-Username: username" \
  -d '{"name”: “new name"}' \
  -L 'https://mysite.com/users/user12345.json'

this returns “success”:“OK”, followed by all the json for the user but doesnt actually do any updates.

Am i missing something?

On a related note: are you able to update the username using the same approach?

Thanks for your help.

[Arkshine]

@Earnie_Baird

but I get [“BAD CSRF”] so I tried this:

Yes, this way has been deprecated in favor of passing the credentials in the header (as below).

@Earnie_Baird

-d '{"name”: “new name"}' \

You mixed quote characters: " and ”. This might be the reason here.

[Earnie_Baird]

Thanks @Arkshine . Have made sure all the quote characters are the same " but its still not working.

Can’t figure out what the issue is.

[JammyDodger]

Have you tried Reverse engineer the Discourse API to check what happens when you use the UI to perform the change?

It works for me when sending a PUT request to eg. /u/test_one.json

[Earnie_Baird]

Thanks @JammyDodger . I did as you suggested and updated the name in the admin UI and then looked in the network tab. As you mentioned it does the update at a different url (/u instead of /users), but when I change the URL it’s still not working.

Under “Form Data”, I’m looking at the request and it is: name: "newname" just like I’m sending it.

As far as I can tell everything looks right and its still not updating. Stumped.

[Earnie_Baird]

Ok… I spent a lot more time digging through the forums and found a similar issue from 7 years ago. Turns out if you update the Content-Type to “application/json; charset=utf-8” it works!

I have one last issue: how do I update the username via the API?

I’ve tried doing something like this but it doesnt work:

-d '{"name”: “new name", "username": "new username"}' \

[Earnie_Baird]

Ok… I was finally able to figure this out. Will leave a little summary here in case someone in the future is looking for how to do this. The other answers I found on the forums were out of date.

To update the name via API:
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" -H "Api-Key: mykey" -H "Api-Username: username" -d '{"name": “mynewname"}' -L 'https://mysite.com/u/user12345.json'

To update the username via API:
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" -H "Api-Key: myapikey" -H "Api-Username: username" -d '{"new_username": "mynewusername"}' -L 'https://mysite.com/u/user12345/preferences/username.json'