Can someone clarify the difference between these three Discourse concepts: theme-component, plugin, and pluginAPI. Especially between theme-component and plugin. If I want to customize my forum, how do I know which to build? (sorry if I missed this distinction in the intro , but I’m not seeing it t…

Thanks, guys. This is helpful. I think the key distinction I am picking up: –if you want to change something that is only about what’s on the front end, build a theme. –if you want to change something that requires interaction with the backend, build a plugin. Does that sound right? Here’s a con…

[image] JQ331: If user is moderator, show the pin button (this is front end) The superficial part might be, but it will involve the backend because it relates to rights and security. You can’t give the front end discretion on what privileges someone has.

[image] merefield: The superficial part might be, but it will involve the backend because it relates to rights and security. You can’t give the front end discretion on what privileges someone has. Do you mean that programmatically answering “Is this user a moderator of this category” is somet…

[image] JQ331: Here, because I need to converse with the backend (probably in (1), maybe also in (3)?), i’d have to use a plugin In a theme, you should be able to know if a user is moderator and also make backend calls if the discourse API exposes an endpoint that you can call from the front-…

That’s very helpful regarding themes v plugins and also regarding the specific example I mentioned. Thanks. So far my approach to entering changes has been to sort through the specifics of the Discourse code (where is this object defined, what controls this template, where is the logic that handles…

I have seen that previously, but I’m taking a closer look now. Thanks for the reminder. Im trying to sort through: –where in the API I would get the info about who the moderator of a given category is (I’m not seeing it in the info returned about categories or users–obviously it has to be somewher…

[image] JQ331: obviously it has to be somewhere I would look in the database. [image] JQ331: add a custom field to a topic The database has a posts table and you could add a field there, but then you will be off the ranch and get no support.

Thanks–this is all very helpful. [image] EricGT: I would look in the database. What database do you mean? To confirm, my idea here would be to use the API to do some of this stuff that might otherwise require a plugin. So, for example, my site itself would be making a call to the API to de…

[image] JQ331: What database do you mean? When Discourse is installed per the standard it is in a Docker container . Persistence of data is achieved using a PostgreSQL database. See: Data Explorer Plugin If you have admin rights you can grab one of the backups, it is SQL compressed into a ta…

Theme-Component v Plugin: What's the difference

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EricGT (EricGT) June 5, 2020, 7:47pm 9

Have you found: How to reverse engineer the Discourse API

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Theme-Component v Plugin: What's the difference

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