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Is this forum Discourse?

Discourse forums expose a public JSON API at known paths. Paste a forum URL and this tool gives you three copyable curl commands to check. Browsers cannot read other sites directly, so the live check arrives with the discatch API. This page shows what to look for.

Forum URL

The three endpoints

Every public Discourse forum exposes these JSON endpoints. If all three return valid JSON, the forum runs Discourse.

EndpointWhat it returnsWhat to look for
/site.jsonForum metadata, categories, groupsA JSON object with a "default_locale" key and a "categories" array
/search.json?q=testSearch results for a test queryA JSON object with a "topics" array and a "posts" array
/latest.jsonThe latest topicsA JSON object with a "topic_list" key containing a "topics" array

What a Discourse response looks like

/site.json (truncated)

{
  "default_locale": "en",
  "categories": [
    { "id": 1, "name": "General", "slug": "general" }
  ],
  "groups": [{ "id": 0, "name": "everyone" }]
}

A non-Discourse forum returns an HTML page, a 404, or a JSON error. The presence of "default_locale" and "categories" in /site.json is the most reliable signal.

Why check

discatch monitors Discourse forums as a first-class source. A catch with site: pointed at a Discourse forum URL searches that forum’s posts and topics through its public JSON API. Knowing whether a forum runs Discourse tells you whether discatch can watch it.

The discatch catch for a Discourse forum

Once you confirm a forum runs Discourse, create a catch with site: and your keyword. The catch fires whenever a new post or topic matches.

Questions

Why can’t this tool check the forum automatically?

Browsers cannot read other sites due to the same-origin policy. The curl commands work from a terminal. A server-side check arrives with the discatch API.

Are all Discourse forums public?

No. Some Discourse forums require login. The JSON endpoints return a 403 or redirect to a login page. discatch can only monitor public forums.

What if /site.json returns HTML?

The forum does not run Discourse, or Discourse is behind a reverse proxy that does not expose the JSON endpoints. Check that the URL is the forum root, not a topic URL.

Which Discourse forums are popular for developer tools?

meta.discourse.org (Discourse itself), community.render.com, forum.rclone.org, community.fly.io, community.cloudflare.com, community.letsencrypt.org, and many open-source project forums. Each has its own URL.

Can discatch watch non-Discourse forums?

Not directly as the discourse source. Non-Discourse forums that are indexed by search engines appear through the web source. A dedicated integration for other forum platforms is not in the v1 plan.

How does the site: filter work?

site:forum.example.com in a discatch query restricts results to that domain. For Discourse, this means the catch watches only that forum.

Last reviewed by , founder, dcouple. Copy from docs/data-sources.md, docs/query-language.md.