Watching Categories based on on group in discourse

Jared_Needell · March 23, 2016, 6:37pm

I found this plugin

github.com/discourse/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

plugin.rb

main

# frozen_string_literal: true
# name: Watch Category
# about: Watches a category for all the users in a particular group
# version: 0.2
# authors: Arpit Jalan
# url: https://github.com/discourse/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

module ::WatchCategory
  def self.watch_category!
    mcneel_private_category = Category.find_by_slug("mcneel-private")
    mcneel_group = Group.find_by_name("mcneel")

    unless mcneel_private_category.nil? || mcneel_group.nil?
      mcneel_group.users.each do |user|
        watched_categories = CategoryUser.lookup(user, :watching).pluck(:category_id)
        if watched_categories.exclude?(mcneel_private_category.id)
          CategoryUser.set_notification_level_for_category(
            user,
            CategoryUser.notification_levels[:watching],
            mcneel_private_category.id,

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Is this only hardcoded for one category and one group? I’d like to try and set this up on a larger scale.

@tobiaseigen

tobiaseigen · March 23, 2016, 6:39pm

What you want to do is fork the plugin on github, update your forked version according to your needs, and then include your forked version in app.yml. I’ve got it working now for I think 5 categories.

My version - to give you an example.

github.com/namati/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

plugin.rb

master

# name: Watch Category
# about: Watches a category for all the users in a particular group
# version: 0.2
# authors: Arpit Jalan
# url: https://github.com/discourse/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

module ::WatchCategory
  def self.watch_category!
    announcements_category = Category.find_by_slug("announcements")
    namati_staff_group = Group.find_by_name("namati_staff")
    return if announcements_category.nil? || namati_staff_group.nil?

    namati_staff_group.users.each do |user|
      watched_categories = CategoryUser.lookup(user, :watching).pluck(:category_id)
      CategoryUser.set_notification_level_for_category(user, CategoryUser.notification_levels[:watching], announcements_category.id) unless watched_categories.include?(announcements_category.id)
    end

    leadership_category = Category.find_by_slug("leadership")
    namati_leadership_group = Group.find_by_name("namati_leadership")
    return if leadership_category.nil? || namati_leadership_group.nil?

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Jared_Needell · March 23, 2016, 6:53pm

Ok sweet

So for your code just make sure I’m reading this right

Namati_Staff gets subscribed to Annoucements
Namati_Leadership get subscribed to Leadership
Network_NGC gets subscribed to NGC
Namati_Culture get subscribed to Culture
namati_assessingopp gets subscribed to assessingopp
namati_scale gets subbed to scale

If that’s right I’m gonna start testing this out, it would be cool to build out a UI for this.

tobiaseigen · March 23, 2016, 7:19pm

yup - you’ve got it right.

Jared_Needell · March 23, 2016, 7:54pm

So testing this out

I have a EmployeesOnly group and a category called : “CONFIDENTIALEmployees Only”

So I want everyone in that group subscribed to this category,

I forked the code and tweaked it to this…

github.com/tekwreck/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

plugin.rb

master

# name: Watch Category
# about: Watches a category for all the users in a particular group
# version: 1.0
# authors: Jared Needell

module ::WatchCategory
  def self.watch_by_group(category_slug, group_name)
    category = Category.find_by(slug: category_slug)
    group = Group.find_by_name(group_name)
    return if category.nil? || group.nil?

    group.users.each do |user|
      watched_categories = CategoryUser.lookup(user, :watching).pluck(:category_id)
      CategoryUser.set_notification_level_for_category(user, CategoryUser.notification_levels[:watching], category.id) unless watched_categories.include?(category.id) || user.staged
    end
  end

  def self.watch_all(category_slug)
    category = Category.find_by(slug: category_slug)
    User.all.each do |user|

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Added the plugin to app.yml , rebuilt

I can see this plugin in admin panel

And finally I went to sidekiq to manually trigger the job,

My account has permission to see this category and is a member of of the EmployeesOnly group. Even with triggering the job, my account isn’t being set to watch “CONFIDENTIALEmployees Only”

Any way to see an error log of some type for this?

Jared_Needell · March 23, 2016, 8:52pm

Tried with the everyone group as well and doesn’t work.

tobiaseigen · March 23, 2016, 9:18pm

I just tested as well and can confirm that this plugin no longer works.

@techAPJ is it possible this plugin of yours is outdated, now that user settings have moved to the user options table? This is not a priority for me right now - perhaps you or @Jared_Needell could update the plugin.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-a-user-setting-for-all-discourse-users/25162/7?u=tobiaseigen

Jared_Needell · March 23, 2016, 10:25pm

@codinghorror might be able to provide insight on this too.

codinghorror · March 23, 2016, 10:26pm

@techapj worked on it – he can elaborate.

Jared_Needell · March 24, 2016, 12:59am

So teaching myself rails tonight!

Breaking down the plugin I did some testing.

Category.find_by_slug(“site-feedback”) doesn’t seem to work, I get a nil return

but if I do

Category.find_by(slug: “site-feedback”) appears to return data.

I made these changes on the plugin and appears to working..

Here’s my code, I’m going to be updating / tweaking it through the night to fit my site needs.

github.com/tekwreck/discourse-watch-category-mcneel

plugin.rb

master

# name: Watch Category
# about: Watches a category for all the users in a particular group
# version: 1.0
# authors: Jared Needell

module ::WatchCategory
  def self.watch_by_group(category_slug, group_name)
    category = Category.find_by(slug: category_slug)
    group = Group.find_by_name(group_name)
    return if category.nil? || group.nil?

    group.users.each do |user|
      watched_categories = CategoryUser.lookup(user, :watching).pluck(:category_id)
      CategoryUser.set_notification_level_for_category(user, CategoryUser.notification_levels[:watching], category.id) unless watched_categories.include?(category.id) || user.staged
    end
  end

  def self.watch_all(category_slug)
    category = Category.find_by(slug: category_slug)
    User.all.each do |user|

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Jared_Needell · March 24, 2016, 1:24am

Plugin also supports looping through all users just not groups. Helpful when it comes to enforcing notifications

watchmanmonitor · March 24, 2016, 4:38am

One day this functionality will be in Discourse core, and I will be even happier with the product.

app/models/category.rb

be3a5a56c


      
            def self.find_by_slug(category_slug, parent_category_slug=nil)
              if parent_category_slug
                parent_category_id = self.where(slug: parent_category_slug, parent_category_id: nil).pluck(:id).first
                self.where(slug: category_slug, parent_category_id: parent_category_id).first
              else
                self.where(slug: category_slug, parent_category_id: nil).first
              end
            end
          end

As you can see in above snippet, this method requires both category_slug and parent_category_slug, so you will have to pass parent_category_slug as well if applicable.

Jared_Needell · April 11, 2016, 5:58pm

Doesn’t look like it requires the parent, the method you linked has an if statement to proceed without the parent category if it isn’t provided.

cpradio · April 11, 2016, 6:01pm

That likely handles top-level categories only. If you want a sub-category, it seems the parent category is required.

techAPJ · April 11, 2016, 6:13pm

In case the parent_category_slug is not passed the method will look for top level categories only, as per this query:

self.where(slug: category_slug, parent_category_id: nil).first

In your case I can see from console screenshot that parent_category_id is 5, so the above condition will not be satisified, hence the method returns nil.

Topic		Replies	Views
Make members of a group watch a category by default Feature completed	88	25027	April 21, 2022
API for Category based notification level update Dev	9	2329	October 30, 2017
API call to watch categories and tags Support	7	3009	October 31, 2021
Force users to watch a category? Feature	2	2041	November 2, 2015
Subscribe a set of users to a category of posts Support	2	605	February 17, 2019

Watching Categories based on on group in discourse

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