Topic views doesn't update on rest API requests

[jandres (Julian)]

In last Version 3.4.0.beta4-dev I noted that topic views doesn’t update when using rest API requests. Even putting headers likeDiscourse-Visible, X-Requested-With or even more

‘Discourse-Visible’: ‘true’,
‘Discourse-Logged-In’ : ‘true’,
‘Discourse-Present’: ‘true’,
‘Discourse-Track-View’: ‘true’,
‘Discourse-Track-View-Topic-Id’: 2214

I don’t know if this is a bug or is something that is programmed like that. But in previous version this behaviour didn’t happen

I would be very grateful if you could help me with this issue.

Thank you very much

[jandres (Julian)]

Is this something that just happening to me ?

I would really appreciate any help you can give me with this problem. I’ve tried several things without success. I think I’ve set all the possible headers I’ve seen in the reverse engineering I’ve done, and the views still aren’t updating. I think there must be a header I’m missing.

By the way I’m using admin API keys instead of User api keys. I hope this is not a problem

Thank you very much

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

API requests don’t track views, unconditionally, by design.

lib/middleware/request_tracker.rb

I guess you are after some feature request here to allow you to track views via our API, recategorizing.

[jandres (Julian)]

hmmm
Thank you @sam but I wonder why before 3.4.0.beta-4 version it did it ?

Request from API doesn't update User#last_seen_at

You can now set DISCOURSE_VISIBLE=“true” on API requests, and Discourse will update the last_seen time for the user https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/af86cf46dc003f19ba52f71826f057884f1119ba

also if User::last_seen_at is updated why not the views ?

When you say a feature it means a plugin that allow me to track views via API ?

Thank you again

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

@Request from API doesn't update User#last_seen_at

You can now set DISCOURSE_VISIBLE=“true” on API requests

@david can you clarify here, is there a change missing from request tracker?

[david (David Taylor)]

Topic views have been migrated to use our “browser pageviews” system. That means that they no longer include any kind of API or crawler requests.

The DISCOURSE_VISIBLE header relates only to the legacy pageviews system.

[Nima1 (Nima)]

If you need API traffic (mobile apps, integrations, etc.) to count as topic views, I’ve published a small plugin that does exactly that:

api-topic-views
https://github.com/gorfist/api-topic-views

It hooks into TopicsController#show and counts eligible API/User API requests as topic views, with options for custom headers, rate limiting, crawler filtering, and user-aware tracking.

It’s still new and not fully battle-tested yet, but it should work well for most self-hosted setups. Feedback or PRs are very welcome!

[jandres (Julian)]

Wow big thank you @Nima1
I am going to to test it, and I would leave you my feedbacks.