What are the Discourse rules for usernames?

abi_at_work · August 10, 2020, 3:08pm

Hello, please can someone point me in the direction of the rules for usernames? I’m trying to establish if ampersands and apostrophes are allowed or not but I cannot find anything in here that helps me. Many thanks.

pfaffman · August 10, 2020, 4:24pm

Welcome, @abi_at_work!

An easy way to answer your question empirically is to go to try.discourse.com and see what usernames you can create there!

If you want to know exactly, you can look at the code:

github.com/discourse/discourse

app/models/username_validator.rb

main

# frozen_string_literal: true

class UsernameValidator
  # Public: Perform the validation of a field in a given object
  # it adds the errors (if any) to the object that we're giving as parameter
  #
  # object - Object in which we're performing the validation
  # field_name - name of the field that we're validating
  #
  # Example: UsernameValidator.perform_validation(user, 'name')
  def self.perform_validation(object, field_name, opts = {})
    validator = UsernameValidator.new(object.public_send(field_name), object:, **opts)
    unless validator.valid_format?
      validator.errors.each { |e| object.errors.add(field_name.to_sym, e) }
    end
  end

  def initialize(username, skip_length_validation: false, object: nil)
    @username = username&.unicode_normalize
    @skip_length_validation = skip_length_validation

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simon · August 10, 2020, 5:12pm

No, it is not possible to use & or ' in a username. If a user attempts to signup for a Discourse site with one of those characters in their username, they will see the following message ( must only include numbers, letters, dashes, dots, and underscores):

abi_at_work · August 11, 2020, 7:52am

Thank you @pfaffman I couldn’t tell if it was configurable or not, but it seems not which would explain why I couldn’t find it. Thank you for the reply.

I thought it might be able to be done in the Allow username Unicode Characters bit of the set up

Topic		Replies	Views
Dropped special characters in usernames Support	8	2452	February 25, 2020
Can you allow emoji in usernames Support	2	694	June 1, 2024
Would like an update on the username settings if possible! Support	2	470	October 10, 2023
Unicode usernames and group names Announcements new-feature	33	9388	February 25, 2025
Username can support more languages or custom settings UX	2	2045	January 22, 2022

What are the Discourse rules for usernames?

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