Discourse Monthly New Sign-ups

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

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

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

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}
• Send as a bot?: yes

Conclusion

I hope this demonstrates that it is pretty simple to build an automation to handle a Discourse metric.