# Reddit OAuth/API Support
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** pr-welcome
**Created:** [7 november 2014 om 22:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939 "2014-11-07T22:30:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Moter8](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moter8)
#### Post date: [7 november 2014 om 22:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/1 "2014-11-07T22:30:41Z")
Would be awesome to log in via a Reddit Account. Would also help user login conversion rates.
Also reddit karma (for example in a specific subreddit) would transfer to Discourse users/group trust levels.
---
### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [9 november 2014 om 00:35 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/2 "2014-11-09T00:35:09Z")
Wait, do they actually provide that?
---
### Author:  [@Moter8](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moter8)
#### Post date: [9 november 2014 om 00:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/3 "2014-11-09T00:47:00Z")
> **[reddit.com: api documentation](http://www.reddit.com/dev/api/oauth)**
>
> Reddit gives you the best of the internet in one place. Get a constantly updating feed of breaking news, fun stories, pics, memes, and videos just for you. Passionate about something niche? Reddit has thousands of vibrant communities with people that...
I think they let you access the username but not the email adresss. Could be wrong on this.
Would still be nice if people could link their reddit accounts to discourse though.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [9 november 2014 om 00:52 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/4 "2014-11-09T00:52:04Z")
If they don’t provide email address, it is basically useless. Email is identity to us.
---
### Author:  [@Moter8](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moter8)
#### Post date: [11 november 2014 om 20:51 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/5 "2014-11-11T20:51:04Z")
Posted about this on [/r/redditdev](http://redd.it/2lrcdv) and [/r/ideasfortheadmins/](http://redd.it/2lsex1)
After not receiving answers from any Admin, I asked again in `#reddit-dev` on `freenode`.
Transcript of the discussion:
``
Any idea what I can do so my request gets answered by a reddit admin or someone in a decision-making place? See [http://redd.it/2lrcdv](http://redd.it/2lrcdv) [http://redd.it/2lsex1](http://redd.it/2lsex1)
A reddit user’s identity is their username, not their email.
- [kemitche] (kemitche@reddit/admins/kemitche): Keith Mitchell
- [kemitche] @#reddit-dev
For a identifaction service the username is not that relevant
e.g. for Discourse
Discourse needs an email-adress to register/identify users
If you want to identify a _person_, reddit is not the sign-in system you want
Discourse already supports google, fb, twitter, github, yahoo OAUTH login/signup
Just reddit not because reddit wont allow email calls
The unique identifier to a reddit account is the redditor’s username. The same email can be used for multiple reddit accounts; it’s not unique, and thus, can’t be used as an identifier on other services.
huh, TIL
That kinda blows, as reddit karma could have been used for user/trust groups 😕
Sounds like a problem with discourse, to me
It might be a good idea to ask Discourse to support a “unique user identifier” instead of just email
oauth2 allows for that
[Reddit OAuth/API Support](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939) 😕
His argument that “email is identity” is a bit silly. On first login to discourse via reddit, you’d ask for the user’s email, then, on discourse, associate the two.
On future logins, you’d have an association of the reddit username to the “true” email.
(On the same lines, though: emails aren’t required for reddit, so that adds another layer of complication to your goals)
Feel free to quote us in that thread, also.
``
Note: dditthardt has no cloak but referred me to [reddit’s team page](http://www.reddit.com/about/team#sort/username/user/dditthardt).
“On first login to discourse via reddit, you’d ask for the user’s email, then, on discourse, associate the two. On future logins, you’d have an association of the reddit username to the “true” email.”
Kinda sounds like Plugin Territory to me, how does the Discourse team feel about this?
---
### Author:  [@ZeroFlux](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ZeroFlux)
#### Post date: [11 november 2014 om 21:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/6 "2014-11-11T21:09:02Z")
Wouldn’t this be similar to Twitter logins?
---
### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [11 november 2014 om 21:34 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/7 "2014-11-11T21:34:57Z")
So, in other words: It could work, if we had the UI to add auth options while logged in.
---
### Author:  [@jeepers183](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jeepers183)
#### Post date: [24 maart 2015 om 02:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/8 "2015-03-24T02:09:17Z")
Have there been any developments in this area? I run a community/sub Reddit and we’ve reached the need to have more power and flexibility that Reddit just cannot offer. I’m already sold on using Discourse but offering Single Sign On with the users Reddit accounts would be the icing on the cake to really increase adoption.
I have to admit that i’m not a programmer but can typically google/hack my way thorough most things but building something to prompt for email addy’s while pulling the other information from Reddit sounds a bit more involved than i’m comfortable jumping into (unless there was a tutorial somewhere haha).
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [24 maart 2015 om 02:59 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/9 "2015-03-24T02:59:41Z")
Is this something you are interested in @riking? I do think Reddit offshoot communities that are more interested in true discussion (and not down voting, ordering by votes, etc) could find good use for Discourse.
---
### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [24 maart 2015 om 03:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/10 "2015-03-24T03:01:27Z")
Not really. It’s not exactly the best source of identity for things that you aren’t tying directly back to Reddit.
---
### Author:  [@jeepers183](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jeepers183)
#### Post date: [24 maart 2015 om 04:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/11 "2015-03-24T04:05:06Z")
> that are more interested in true discussion (and not down voting, ordering by votes, etc
This! That’s exactly what we are going for. Reddit was nice because of the user base but it isn’t the greatest when it comes to encouraging fresh discussion, on the flip side topics can’t be too old which is horrible if you’re linking threads in the sidebar.
I understand if this isn’t something we can accomplish, we’re still going with Discourse either way because the alternative (PhpBB or something) just feels way too 1990, plus we have a ton of mobile users and want the site to look professional for everyone no matter what device they’re on.
---
### Author:  [@Ham](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ham)
#### Post date: [3 december 2016 om 20:10 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/12 "2016-12-03T20:10:08Z")
Has anyone worked on this? or given a price on a plugin? We go after reddit users all the time for our community. They are the most active we have.
---
### Author:  [@elijah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elijah)
#### Post date: [5 december 2016 om 23:56 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/13 "2016-12-05T23:56:09Z")
Reddit allows you to sign up without handing over an email address.
That’s a non-starter per:
> [@Reddit OAuth/API Support](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/4):
>
> If they don’t provide email address, it is basically useless. Email is identity to us.
---
### Author:  [@jd2066](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jd2066)
#### Post date: [8 februari 2018 om 12:39 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/14 "2018-02-08T12:39:33Z")
> [@elijah](#):
>
> Reddit allows you to sign up without handing over an email address.
>
> That’s a non-starter per:
>
> > [@codinghorror](#):
> >
> > If they don’t provide email address, it is basically useless. Email is identity to us.
I just tested the Facebook Authentication on the [try.discourse.org](http://try.discourse.org) site and Facebook still works if you disallow sharing email in the Facebook Permissions dialog.
The Discourse sign-up just asks the user for their email instead of getting the email from the OAuth provider.
Discourse could still do the same thing for Reddit where it just asks the user for their email address as when the API doesn’t return an email address.
Reddit is different in that it never returns an email address where Facebook will provide an email address unless the user decides to not share it with Discourse but otherwise the handling of an OAuth provider that doesn’t return an email address seems to already be a case that is handled by Discourse.
---
### Author:  [@oshyan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/oshyan)
#### Post date: [17 november 2020 om 18:22 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/15 "2020-11-17T18:22:55Z")
Has anything changed on this 2+ years later? Reddit is still not a great place for great discussion and in-depth engagement. Making it as seamless as possible for those populous communities to connect with relevant Discourse sites seems like a pretty great possibility both for Redditors and the people who run those Discourse forums. I’m one of them. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@henvo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/henvo)
#### Post date: [25 januari 2023 om 23:06 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/16 "2023-01-25T23:06:24Z")
@riking @codinghorror
Is Reddit Oauth still a nonstarter? Like a poster above, and I imagine many others going down this route, I have a popular subreddit that’s outgrowing the platform. I’d like a place for long form conversations that can tie back to the subreddit. Shared identify between the platforms is important.
---
### Author:  [@henvo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/henvo)
#### Post date: [25 januari 2023 om 23:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/17 "2023-01-25T23:26:12Z")
@jd2066 did you ever implement something based on your observation that Facebook without email still works? This sounds like a basic UX tweak.
Apparently Flarum handles this case:
> **[Reddit Oauth - Flarum Community](https://discuss.flarum.org/d/32312-reddit-oauth/4)**
>
> Get support using and extending Flarum, the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun.
---
### Author:  [@jd2066](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jd2066)
#### Post date: [26 januari 2023 om 08:22 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/18 "2023-01-26T08:22:11Z")
I was just pointing out that Discource already handled Facebook login when an email address was not returned by asking the user for their email address so it should be possible to do the same thing with a Reddit login that doesn’t return an email address.
However, I’m not a Discourse developer so it’s not something I can implement.
---
### Author:  [@henvo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/henvo)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2023 om 01:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/19 "2023-01-27T01:05:55Z")
For anyone finding this thread, NodeBB also supports Reddit OAuth and doesn’t need to center user identity around email. I’ve been looking into this feature on multiple platforms.
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [27 januari 2023 om 15:14 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939/20 "2023-01-27T15:14:25Z")
This topic is tagged as #pr-welcome , which means we are open to receive this feature as a community contribution, but we ain’t planning to work on it ourselves as it’s not a priority for our hosted customers.
[Volgende pagina](https://meta.discourse.org/t/reddit-oauth-api-support/21939.md?page=2)