I don’t understand why full documentation for all API endpoints doesn’t exist. The original documentation was released to the public on December 2014, and here we are 6 years later and the documentation is still half-baked. Why is this? The lack of good documentation and the suggestion to reverse-e…

Can you give some examples as to what you’re having trouble with or finding lacking?

This is a timely topic because I have a warning on my forum. “We detected an API request using a deprecated authentication method.” I would like to know the current method I should be using, and a how-to guide to implement it from the forum admin POV. What I’ve found are dated threads that link to…

Proper API authentication is covered in the docs, right at the top. In short, you need to use HTTP Headers to provide the API key and username instead of URL parameters.

@justin My specific example is I’m slowly working on rolling out a Discourse API Python wrapper, and I find the lack of proper documentation overwhelming. I already have to hand-test every single endpoint, but many of those endpoints are either not documented or are incorrectly documented. It’s dir…

Out of interest why don’t you simply support what is required until you hit a new unsupported requirement at which point reverse engineer it? That’s a lot easier than aiming for 100% and it’s pointless wrapping calls that will never get used? Especially since you will be supporting a moving target…

I understand that this can be reverse-engineered. It’s just a little frustrating to have to do this. The API was created by humans who must know how it works, why can’t those humans write it down so others can be informed? I don’t feel like this is a big ask. Good documentation is crucial in any pr…

That’s the plan right now, I’ve got every documented endpoint mirrored on my repo right now in the develop branch, and I’ve come to the point where I’m going to have to start reverse-engineering. I’m already starting to contribute to GitHub - discourse/discourse_api_docs: Discourse API Documentatio…

[image] samamorgan: I’m really just questioning why this is even necessary on such an established project. As with anything, it’s a matter of resources and priority. The API surface is huge. Technically, it’s everything - everything is accessed via the API, hence why reverse engineering works…

Why isn't the Discourse API fully documented?

Development

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) January 12, 2020, 12:35am 10

See Reverse engineer the Discourse API

Why isn’t every grain of sand on a beach “fully documented”?

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Programmatic way to get all API endpoints for my instance? Development rest-api	11	660	April 24, 2025
Contributing to the Discourse API documentation Contributing rest-api , how-to	3	3270	November 16, 2023
Swagger, WADL or similar for the REST API? Development	10	14762	August 30, 2016
What is the Timing of Formal Discourse REST API? Feature	5	2444	November 20, 2014
A New Python API Development	2	2340	September 30, 2021

Why isn't the Discourse API fully documented?

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