# Using external\_id via API

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-external-id-via-api/252666>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** rest-api\
**Created:** [January 23, 2023, 9:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-external-id-via-api/252666 "2023-01-23T21:23:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![eg-gam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9de053/32.png) [@eg-gam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eg-gam)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2023, 12:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-external-id-via-api/252666/3 "2023-01-24T00:00:27Z")

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Thanks for your reply.

I think that means we cannot use external\_id, because we don’t want to enable [DiscourseConnect](https://meta.discourse.org/t/13045?silent=true). We don’t want to replace Discourse authentication.

We’ll probably have to create the user via API, then store the Discourse user.id in our system and reference them that way.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-external-id-via-api/252666)._