Seeding a new forum by creating users and content

joesed · August 28, 2016, 8:45pm

Hi there

Discourse looks amazing. Wow! A big change from my old days using phpbb.

In the past, admittedly a long time ago now, I’ve had greater success starting new forums by initially seeding some content. A little social proof does wonders for engagement levels!

Would love to know whether it is possible to seed a new discourse forum. What I’d like to do is to create say 200 user accounts and roughly 1000 topics and replies before launching.

Is it possible to do this without having either 200 email addresses or 200 social accounts?

I’d like to add these users from the admin panel and log in to them occasionally to respond to new users.

Many thanks

Joe

Sergiz · August 28, 2016, 10:23pm

You can write yourself a script for that using API

pfaffman · April 25, 2019, 10:30pm

Seems disingenuous, but you can create multiple users with a single email account by using email addresses like this:

my.gmail.username@gmail.com
my.gmail.username+user1@gmail.com
my.gmail.username+joe@gmail.com
my.gmail.username+funnyguy@gmail.com
my.gmail.username+smartypants@gmail.com
my.gmail.username+guyWeHate@gmail.com

and so on. Most email systems support this convention.

There’s a bulk import feature, so you could create them all in a spreadsheet or whatever.

The API is a great took but you might also put the content in some database and write an importer to populate Discourse. See vanilla.rb and vanilla_mysql.db for examples. I just wrote an importer to import an image gallery. I thought it was a bad idea at first, because it would seem like an image gallery would be a good way to display an image gallery. But it turns out that the image gallery in Discourse is pretty freaking great.

joesed · August 29, 2016, 9:36am

Hi Sergiz and Jay

Thank you both for these suggestions.

I’m not a coder, so I’d probably look at doing things your way Jay.

Certainly not trying to be disingenuous, but I think it’s important to get the ball rolling with some posts. That way, others are more likely to join in.

Once again, many thanks.

Joe

pfaffman · August 29, 2016, 8:03pm

If you already have the 1000 posts and 200 usernames created in some machine-readable format it would probably be worth a few minutes to look at how the API works and/or paying someone to do it for you, but then, I’m a programmer, so I would think that. Or course, I’d rather spend 20 hours writing code than 10 copy-and-pasting, because what if you ever needed to do it again?

HAWK · September 1, 2016, 12:00am

Hey Joe,
You’re definitely right about social proof, but creating fake users is questionable practice and I’d strongly recommend against it, for the long term health of your community. There are more ethical ways of doing it (which won’t result in a backlash). If you want some advice around doing things differently, I’m happy to help.

Here is further reading.

joesed · August 30, 2016, 8:33pm

Hi @HAWK

I think you make a really great point.

I read your article and it makes a lot of sense. Developing a community the right way might take a bit longer but I think it will be better in the long run.

You have turned me around. I think my thinking is a little 2009.

Once again, many thanks

Joe

HAWK · September 1, 2016, 12:00am

Heh, awesome. Good on you.

[quote=“joesed, post:7, topic:49345”]
Developing a community the right way might take a bit longer but I think it will be better in the long run.
[/quote] Yup! If you want support or resources, I manage a free community about community building here. You’re welcome to join us.

joesed · August 31, 2016, 11:59pm

Hi @HAWK

Thanks so much for that. I will take you up on that offer to join your community as well if that’s okay. That’s really cool. Thanks!

And to everyone else who helped out, much respect. Thank you.

Cheers

Joe

vas · April 19, 2017, 9:40am

I don’t think this is possible as the posts section in api doesn’t have user id.
http://docs.discourse.org/#tag/Posts
How to tag response with an user? @pfaffman

pfaffman · April 19, 2017, 12:54pm

I cannot imagine that the API for posts doesn’t include the userid. Perhaps the documentation is wrong. There is a post about reverse engineering the API that might help,

vas · April 19, 2017, 2:15pm

Can you point out the link here? Will check it out!

cpradio · April 19, 2017, 2:33pm

I’m fairly certain it doesn’t. It takes it from the API userid and API key.

I just checked with one of my apps and I’m not passing a Username when creating a reply.

github.com

discourse/github-issues-to-discourse/blob/master/routes/api/discourse.js#L68-L73


return Promise.each(commentResult, commentItem => {
  var comment_date = new Date(commentItem.created_at).toString();
  var comment_body = "<i>From @" + commentItem.user.login + " on " + comment_date + "</i><br /><br />" + commentItem.body;


  return discourseReplyToTopic(comment_body, issue.discourse.topic_id);
});

Same with creating a topic:

github.com

discourse/github-issues-to-discourse/blob/master/lib/discourseCreateTopic/index.js

var Discourse = require('discourse-api');
var Promise = require('bluebird');

module.exports = function(req, issue) {
  var category = req.body.category;
  var url = req.session.discourse.url;
  var username = req.session.discourse.username;
  var api_key = req.session.discourse.api_key;
  
  var api = new Discourse(url, api_key, username);
  var discourseCreateTopic = Promise.promisify(api.createTopic, {context: api});

  // Create Topic at Discourse Instance
  var issue_date = new Date(issue.created_at).toString();
  var issue_body = (issue.body) ? issue.body : "_(empty description)_";
  var topic_body = "<i>From @" + issue.user.login + " on " + issue_date + "</i><br /><br />"
    + issue_body + "<br /><br />" + "<i>Copied from original issue: " + issue.html_url + "</i>";

  return discourseCreateTopic(issue.title, topic_body, category).then(function (createResult) {
    return JSON.parse(createResult);

This file has been truncated. show original

The only username it will have is based on the API username and key I provide.

pfaffman · April 19, 2017, 2:58pm

Ha! Now I get it. I guess I need a better imagination. Thanks, @cpradio.

So it would seem that the way to create seed data with many users would be to modify an import script. It’s probably easiest to get your data into MBOX form and use the mbox importer.

david · April 19, 2017, 3:40pm

It doesn’t seem to be in the API docs, but there is a POST endpoint for

/t/{id}/change-owner

which seems to take two parameters

{
post_ids[]:{post-id-to-change},
username:{user-to-change-ownership-to}
}

(I found that by watching my chrome dev tools while clicking the “change ownership” button on a post)

Maybe you use that to create posts using one user, then change their owner.

riking · April 21, 2017, 7:54pm

Two notes:

post_ids[] is a comma-separated array, you can do multiple
doing this creates a revision on the post

It’s better to do an import script.