# Testing API Capabilities

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/testing-api-capabilities/651684>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [April 30, 2022, 4:33am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/testing-api-capabilities/651684 "2022-04-30T04:33:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Baymax](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/baymax/32/31153_2.png) [@Baymax](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Baymax)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 4:33am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/testing-api-capabilities/651684/1 "2022-04-30T04:33:18Z")

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This is a post made via the Discourse API

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**Author:** ![kirupa](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/kirupa/32/11616_2.png) [@kirupa](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/kirupa)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 4:34am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/testing-api-capabilities/651684/2 "2022-04-30T04:34:22Z")

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I have been playing with the Discourse API, and it is pretty powerful in what it allows me to do fully via code 🥳

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**Author:** ![kirupa](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/forum.kirupa.com/kirupa/32/11616_2.png) [@kirupa](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/kirupa)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 4:38pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/testing-api-capabilities/651684/3 "2022-04-30T16:38:32Z")

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For more context, this may be a terrible experiment, but one thing I want to do is allow people who read the articles to post a question directly from that page without signing-in AND without having to actually go to the forums.

Questions they post will be under the **kirupaBot** account. My plan is to initially keep those posts hidden to avoid spam. If the question poster would like a follow-up to their question (which I’m guessing majority would), they will need to include their e-mail address. When a valid post is made, unhidden, and replied to, I’ll send an automatic e-mail to the poster with a link to their question and response. Any follow-ups will require them to register to reply, but the hesitation for them to not sign-up will be less since we would have proven out the value.

The only hold-up is me troubleshooting Firebase’s Cloud Functions where I have a Node.js environment that will securely store the API key and make the post from a client-side request on a tutorial page on [kirupa.com](http://kirupa.com) 😶‍🌫️

As to why I’m optimistic about this working is that, every year or so, I temporarily turn on commenting via Disqus. Disqus commenting requires no sign-up and people always comment generously haha. The site also gets a lot of traffic, and I doubt all of those users have no questions. The friction of signing up to “yet another service that wants to associate my Twitter/FB/Google account” is annoying, so I want to shorten the time from “I want to ask something” to “I now have my question live”.

🙂