Talk:Discourse

What is the MIME type, extension(s) and magic number(s) of this file format? felix (talk) 11:27, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, this site has always had a broader conception of its coverage than things with MIME types, exensions, etc., ever since its founder/owner, Jason Scott, started it up with things like DNA. But, certainly, it would be a worthy addition to this article if you can document the specifics of how messages within Discourse are stored and transmitted, something that certainly would end up involving MIME types, extensions, and so on which could be comprehensively documented. Having a stub article in place gives future contributors a location to put this once it's researched and determined. Dan Tobias (talk) 12:25, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the README file, they are apparently stored in a PostgreSQL database in some ad-hoc table schema that probably varies between versions of the software. And like most other web software, I guess the messages are posted by submitting forms over HTTP, again in some ad-hoc structure encoded as application/x-www-form-urlencoded or through some JSON "API". I don't think documenting every single ad-hoc RDBMS schema or "API" endpoint every single piece of web software uses is practical or necessary. The Discourse software is open-source, so if for some reason you needed to work with its database directly, you could adapt the source code to your needs, or peek into it to understand which SQL queries you need to execute. The column and table names could be even so self-explanatory that you wouldn't even need to do that. Documenting it independently here is just not a priority at best. And even if that is the goal, naming this page "Discourse" doesn't help make that explicit. felix (talk) 17:22, 4 May 2015 (UTC)