Discourse is a great discussion forum application. It’s another thing from Jeff Atwood, the co-founder of Stackoverflow/Stackexchange. The installation is epecially easy with their dockerized installation setup on DigitalOcean ([instructions here][https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-discourse-on-ubuntu-14-04]).
In rOpenSci, we’ve been using a Google Groups mailing list, which is sufficient I guess, but doesn’t support Markdown, and we all know Google can kill products any day, so it makes sense to use something with which we have more control. We’ve set up our own Discourse installation to have rOpenSci discussions - find it at discuss.ropensci.org. Check it out if you want to discuss anything rOpenSci related, or general open science, open source software, etc. You can login with email, Mozilla Persona, Twitter, or GitHub.
Discourse does have a RESTful API, which I found through the Ruby gem. Why not interact with the API via R?
Install
Install discgolf
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("sckott/discgolf")
library("discgolf")
Authentication
The Discourse API is based on using a specific installation of Discourse (as far as I know), which requires your username and an API key for that installation. Get those (I found mine in the admin panel), and you can pass them in to each function call, or set as option variables in .Rprofile (use discourse_api_key and discourse_username) or environment variables in .Renviron (use DISCOURSE_API_KEY and DISCOURSE_USERNAME).
Examples
Get the latest topics (abbreviated content for blog post brevity)
latest_topics()
#> id title fancy_title
#> 1 8 Welcome to rOpenSci Discuss Welcome to rOpenSci Discuss
#> 2 92 Feedback on geojsonio package? Feedback on geojsonio package?
#> 3 102 Astronomy research Astronomy research
#> 4 99 Rgbif argument question Rgbif argument question
#> 5 93 Feedback on rnoaa ghcnd functions Feedback on rnoaa ghcnd functions
#> slug
#> 1 welcome-to-ropensci-discuss
#> 2 feedback-on-geojsonio-package
#> 3 astronomy-research
#> 4 rgbif-argument-question
#> 5 feedback-on-rnoaa-ghcnd-functions
Get new topics
new_topics()
#> $topic_list
#> $topic_list$can_create_topic
#> [1] TRUE
#>
#> $topic_list$draft
#> NULL
#>
#> $topic_list$draft_key
#> [1] "new_topic"
#>
#> $topic_list$draft_sequence
#> [1] 15
#>
#> $topic_list$per_page
#> [1] 30
#>
#> $topic_list$topics
#> list()
Get topics by a specific user
topics_by("cboettig")
#> $users
#> id username uploaded_avatar_id
#> 1 3 cboettig 4
#> 2 1 sckott 2
#> 3 35 noamross 57
#> 4 2 karthik 3
#> avatar_template
#> 1 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/cboettig/{size}/4.png
#> 2 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/sckott/{size}/2.png
#> 3 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/noamross/{size}/57.png
#> 4 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/karthik/{size}/3.png
#>
#> $topic_list
#> $topic_list$can_create_topic
#> [1] TRUE
#>
#> $topic_list$draft
#> NULL
#>
#> $topic_list$draft_key
#> [1] "new_topic"
#>
#> $topic_list$draft_sequence
#> [1] 15
#>
#> $topic_list$per_page
#> [1] 30
#>
#> $topic_list$topics
#> id title
#> 1 15 Using Discourse for blog comments as well?
#> 2 16 Reply by email?
#> fancy_title
#> 1 Using Discourse for blog comments as well?
#> 2 Reply by email?
#> slug posts_count reply_count
#> 1 using-discourse-for-blog-comments-as-well 8 4
#> 2 reply-by-email 6 2
#> highest_post_number image_url created_at
#> 1 8 NA 2014-12-15T19:33:11.879Z
#> 2 6 NA 2014-12-15T20:10:36.414Z
#> last_posted_at bumped bumped_at unseen
#> 1 2015-01-02T19:47:42.403Z TRUE 2015-01-02T19:47:42.403Z FALSE
#> 2 2014-12-17T00:18:31.427Z TRUE 2014-12-17T00:18:31.427Z FALSE
#> last_read_post_number unread new_posts pinned unpinned visible closed
#> 1 8 0 0 FALSE NA TRUE FALSE
#> 2 6 0 0 FALSE NA TRUE FALSE
#> archived notification_level bookmarked liked views like_count
#> 1 FALSE 2 TRUE FALSE 71 0
#> 2 FALSE 3 TRUE FALSE 54 0
#> has_summary archetype last_poster_username category_id pinned_globally
#> 1 FALSE regular cboettig 3 FALSE
#> 2 FALSE regular sckott 1 FALSE
#> bookmarked_post_numbers
#> 1 1
#> 2 1
#> posters
#> 1 latest, NA, NA, NA, Original Poster, Most Recent Poster, Frequent Poster, Frequent Poster, Frequent Poster, 3, 1, 35, 2
#> 2 NA, latest, Original Poster, Most Recent Poster, 3, 1
Get a single topic by id number
topic(8)
#> id name username
#> 1 11 system system
#> 2 14 Scott Chamberlain sckott
#> 3 51 Scott Chamberlain sckott
#> avatar_template uploaded_avatar_id
#> 1 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/system/{size}/1.png 1
#> 2 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/sckott/{size}/2.png 2
#> 3 /user_avatar/discuss.ropensci.org/sckott/{size}/2.png 2
Create topic
text <- '
print("hello world")
#> [1] "hello world"
head(mtcars)
#> mpg cyl disp hp drat wt qsec vs am gear carb
#> Mazda RX4 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46 0 1 4 4
#> Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02 0 1 4 4
#> Datsun 710 22.8 4 108 93 3.85 2.320 18.61 1 1 4 1
#> Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44 1 0 3 1
#> Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02 0 0 3 2
#> Valiant 18.1 6 225 105 2.76 3.460 20.22 1 0 3 1
'
create_topic(title="testing from discgolf - 2", text=text)
Wrapup
There are more functions I didn’t highlight, and there are many methods that haven’t been implemented yet… in good time it will be done.