Change default category watch state for administrator

[baris]

If you really want every user to watch a category I would suggest using a plugin to automatically watch the category on user creation. It can be done with the action:user.create hook.

// in plugin.json
"hooks" : {
  "action:user.create": "onUserCreate"
}

// in library.js of your plugin
const categories = require.main.require('./src/categories');
plugin.onUserCreate = async function ({ user }) {
  const announcementCategory = 1;
  await user.setCategoryWatchState(user.uid, [announcementCategory], categories.watchStates.watching);
};

[kinetix]

@baris Thank you for the detail, and please pardon my ignorance - is that code snippet an entire plugin unto itself that I could add in? (I haven't looked at how they're added in manually yet, what the minimal code looks like, etc)

[baris]

It is not an entire plugin but it's the only code you need in a plugin to achieve what you want. A plugin has some boilerpate code. You can see a full starter plugin at https://github.com/NodeBB/nodebb-plugin-quickstart. The plugin docs also go over the details https://docs.nodebb.org/development/quickstart/

[kinetix]

Ah, got it, thank you!

[kinetix]

@baris Hmm, ok, I think I'm close to having built this small plugin. It's tripping up on the setting of the watch state, with:

error: TypeError: user.setCategoryWatchState is not a function

The only thing I've tried to deal with this error so far is to add in to library.js:

const user = require.main.require('./src/user');

And unfortunately that didn't change anything with regard to the error. I presume I'm close here but am not sure what else is missing to cause the lack of the function.

[baris]

Can you put your plugin up on github or similar so we can see? That function is here so the below should work

const user = require.main.require('./src/user');
const categories = require.main.require('./src/categories');
await user.setCategoryWatchState(user.uid, [announcementCategory], categories.watchStates.watching);

[kinetix]

Hmm, ok, I wonder what I'm doing incorrectly then. Maybe I stripped too much out of the quickstart or I haven't done something properly when updating the library.js? Here's the code:

GitHub - realkinetix/nodebb-plugin-auto-set-watch-categories: Plugin to set category watching on user creation

Plugin to set category watching on user creation. Contribute to realkinetix/nodebb-plugin-auto-set-watch-categories development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

[baris]

This should work

plugin.onUserCreate = async function (hookData) {

  const announcementCategory = 1;
  await user.setCategoryWatchState(hookData.user.uid, [announcementCategory], categories.watchStates.watching);

};

[kinetix]

Hmm... closer, the error is different now:

error: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'user')

I've pushed the changes to my repo.

[baris]

@kinetix You haven't used the code I posted, it should be (hookData) not ({ hookData }), it should work once you fix that.

[kinetix]

@baris Sorry about that - yup, that got it. Thanks so much for the clue bats!