Can't run without Recurse Center API Key

[jamesa]

I'd really like to get this app running. I'm having a hard time getting a Recurse Center API key. If I understand it right, I need to be a member of the Recurse Center to get one of these keys.

Any way around this / next steps for me? I wanted to explore this app to run my own community. Thanks for your help!

[zachallaun]

Hi @jamesa! Unfortunately Community isn't in a great state to be generally useful at the moment. As you've seen, it can't be used without an RC API key, and we can't issue them to anyone outside of RC. We've been intending to decouple Community from RC for a while now, but it hasn't been a priority (and likely won't become one too soon, though your interest has definitely bought it back onto my radar).

For the most part, we use the RC API only for user creation (using a custom account import endpoint) and login (using OAuth). If you have a system that can provide those two things, then it wouldn't be too much work to swap out our thing for yours. However, there are other parts of the code where we've hard-coded RC-related stuff, like the email addresses we use, etc. I don't believe it would be very difficult to identify all of these uses and replace them with something more generic – it's just a matter of having the time and energy to do it.

Anyways, thanks for your interest in this! As I mentioned, you've put this task back on my radar, but I can't promise a timeline at the moment. If you're familiar with Ruby and willing to jump into the codebase yourself, I could provide some more guidance when I have a bit more time.

Cheers,
Zach

[jamesa]

Hey @zachallaun, thank you so much for the thoughtful response. I noticed that was the case in the codebase, so I'll try my hand at that and seeing what I come up with! Was just hoping to get it up and running quickly so I could decide if I like it or not, since I couldn't find a demo. :)

Thank you again!

[zachallaun]

Gotcha! It's definitely a bummer that there's no good way to test it without being a Recurser. I'll think on that more as well.

[brainwane]

Is there a roadmap (beyond the road to 1.0) or milestone I could follow, so I could set my expectations on when this feature might be expected in Community? Thanks!

[zachallaun]

@brainwane At the moment, there is not. There are a few reasonably large changes we've been kicking around for a while that would likely be prioritized ahead of a general release, and even those are prioritized behind other work that will likely carry me through the year. Once this work starts though, I'll make an effort to comment on this and John's issue linked above your comment.