Replicate Discourse Data to Multiple Databases via the CData Sync CLI

Always-on applications rely on automatic failover capabilities and real-time access to data. CData Sync for Discourse integrates live Discourse data into your mirrored databases, always-on cloud databases, and other databases such as your reporting server: Automatically synchronize with remote Discourse data from Windows or any machine running Java.

You can use Sync's command-line interface (CLI) to easily control almost all aspects of the replication. You can use the CLI to replicate Discourse data to one or many databases without any need to change your configuration.

Connect to Discourse Data

You can save connection strings and other settings like email notifications in XML configuration files.

The following example shows how to replicate to SQLite.

Windows

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync><DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType>
  <DatabaseProvider>System.Data.SQLite</DatabaseProvider>
  <ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;</ConnectionString>
  <ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
  <NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
  <DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
  <TaskSchedulerStartTime>09:51</TaskSchedulerStartTime>
  <TaskSchedulerInterval>Never</TaskSchedulerInterval>
</CDataSync>

Java

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CDataSync><DatabaseType>SQLite</DatabaseType><DatabaseProvider>org.sqlite.JDBC</DatabaseProvider>
<ConnectionString>Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;</ConnectionString>
<ReplicateAll>False</ReplicateAll>
<NotificationUserName></NotificationUserName>
<DatabaseConnectionString>Data Source=C:\my.db</DatabaseConnectionString>
</CDataSync>

The Discourse API uses API Key authentication.

Using API Key Authentication

Discourse requires API Key and Username for authentication. API Keys are generated in the Discourse Admin panel under the API section. You can create user-specific API keys or all-users API keys. Once you have obtained the API Key, set it along with the Domain and Username in the ProfileSettings connection property.

Example Connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;

Configure Replication Queries

Sync enables you to control replication with standard SQL. The REPLICATE statement is a high-level command that caches and maintains a table in your database. You can define any SELECT query supported by the Discourse API. The statement below caches and incrementally updates a table of Discourse data:

REPLICATE Backups;

You can specify a file containing the replication queries. This enables you to use the same replication queries to replicate to several databases.

Run Sync

After you have configured the connection strings and replication queries, you can run Sync with the following command-line options:

Windows

APISync.exe -g MySQLiteConfig.xml -f APISync.sql

Java

java -Xbootclasspath/p:c:\sqlitejdbc.jar -jar APISync.jar -g MySQLiteConfig.xml -f APISync.sql