Here is my note on how to get the number of new sign-ups for a discourse forum.
Background
As a developer advocate, I oversee our developer forum that is hosted using Discourse platform.
For a monthly metric report, I need to determine how many new sign-ups we have for the prior month.
Surprisingly, it is tedious to get this number.
Bookmarklet Method
I created a bookmarklet that will generate the URL to the Discourse Admin Report with the correct parameters.
📝 Make sure to update the discourseDomain
variable with your Discourse domain.
javascript: (function () {
const discourseDomain = 'forum.kintone.dev';
const formatDate = (date) => {
const year = date.getFullYear();
const month = (date.getMonth() + 1).toString().padStart(2, '0');
const day = date.getDate().toString().padStart(2, '0');
return `${year}-${month}-${day}`;
};
const todayDate = new Date();
const firstDayPrevMonth = new Date(todayDate.getFullYear(), todayDate.getMonth() - 1, 1);
const lastDayPrevMonth = new Date(todayDate.getFullYear(), todayDate.getMonth(), 0);
const startDate = formatDate(firstDayPrevMonth);
const endDate = formatDate(lastDayPrevMonth);
const url = `https://${discourseDomain}/admin/reports/signups?end_date=${endDate}&mode=table&start_date=${startDate}`;
console.log(url);
window.open(url, '_blank');
})();
Zapier Method
Here is the Zapier workflow I created to get a monthly Slack post with the sign-up count.
1. Every Month in Schedule by Zapier
- App:
Schedule by Zapier
- Event:
Every Month
- Step details
- Day of the Month:
1
- Time of Day:
Noon
- Day of the Month:
2. Change Date Format to YYYY-MM-DD (for Schedule by Zapier's "Pretty Date" field)
- App:
Formatter by Zapier
- Event:
Date / Time
- Step details
- Transform:
Format
- Input:
1. Pretty Date: Nov 6, 2023
- To Format:
YYYY-MM-DD
- To Timezone:
UTC
- From Format:
MMM D, YYYY
- From Timezone:
UTC
- Transform:
3. Run Javascript in Code by Zapier
- App:
Code by Zapier
- Event:
Run Javascript
- Step details
- Input Data
-
todayDate
:2. Output: 2023-11-06
-
Code:
// Set the discourseDomain variable to your Discourse domain const discourseDomain = 'forum.kintone.dev'; // Extract the day, month, and year from the todayDate string let day = inputData.todayDate.slice(8, 10); let month = inputData.todayDate.slice(5, 7); let year = inputData.todayDate.slice(0, 4); // Convert the day, month, and year to numbers day = Number(day); month = Number(month); year = Number(year); // Calculate the prior month let priorMonth = month - 1; // If the prior month is 0, set the prior month to December (12) and decrement the year if (priorMonth == 0) { priorMonth = 12; year--; } // Initialize variables for the first day and last day of the month let firstDay = 1; // Set the first day of the month to 1 let lastDay = 31; // Most months have 31 days // Determine the number of days in the prior month (April, June, September, and November have 30 days) if (priorMonth == 4 || priorMonth == 6 || priorMonth == 9 || priorMonth == 11) { lastDay = 30; } // If the prior month is February, check if it's a leap year if (priorMonth == 2) { if (year % 4 == 0 && (year % 100 != 0 || year % 400 == 0)) { lastDay = 29; } else { lastDay = 28; } } // Format the prior month, first day, and last day as strings in YYYY-MM-DD format priorMonth = priorMonth.toString().padStart(2, "0"); firstDay = firstDay.toString().padStart(2, "0"); lastDay = lastDay.toString().padStart(2, "0"); // Combine the prior month, first day, and last day with the year to get the full date const start = `${year}-${priorMonth}-${firstDay}`; const end = `${year}-${priorMonth}-${lastDay}`; // Generate the REST API Endpoint URL const endPoint = `https://${discourseDomain}/admin/reports/signups.json?end_date=${end}&mode=table&start_date=${start}` // Set the output in the format that Zapier expects output = { url: endPoint};
4. Get Request in Webhooks by Zapier
- App:
Webhooks by Zapier
- Event:
GET
- Step details
- URL:
3. Output: url
- Query String Params: blank
- Send As JSON:
no
- Unflatten:
yes
- Headers
-
Api-Key
:your_discourse_api_key
-
Api-Username
:your_discourse_username
- URL:
5. Run Javascript in Code by Zapier
- App:
Code by Zapier
- Event:
Run Javascript
-
Step details:
- Input Data
-
inputArray
:4. Report Data Y:
- Code:
// Split the input string into an array of numbers const inputArray = inputData.inputArray.split(",").map(Number); // Use the reduce function to sum up all the numbers in the array const sum = inputArray.reduce((total, num) => total + num, 0); // Create an output object with the sum as a property output = { sum: sum };
6. Send Channel Message in Slack
- App:
Slack
- Event:
Send Channel Message
- Slack: Your Account
- Step details
- Channel:
#your_slack_channel
- Message Text:
Last month's sign-up count: {5. Output: sum}
- Channel:
- Send as a bot?:
yes
Conclusion
I hope this demonstrates that it is pretty simple to build an automation to handle a Discourse metric.
Top comments (0)