Thank you so much for the replies. I'll dig into that again and probably come back with other questions

Re: NodeBB For a Complete Beginner
^ Quite a few years have past since this post, I'm at the same stage than @AccessDenied. I have dev experience, yet I'm lost without any proper explanation around the data flows for NodeBB.

I want to:

• Keep records of a mapping between a NodeBB userId and an external user Id extUserID. (using Mongo)
• Build a Widget that will fetch external data (using this extUserID) and show this custom data for each user.

I've had a look at many widgets, but I still quite don't get how the data flows from the back to the front-end. e.g to get user data here this widget calls user.getUidsFromSet.

Now my dumb questions:

• How do I let the front-end access user data such as this extUserId? Is there a list of those methods somewhere?
• Can I, and if yes, how can I add this additional property in Mongo to store this extUserId. I get that I can add it manually to mongo but how to let users fill it. This would represent an additional field in the user profile I imagine.
• From the front-end, how can I alter the DB? There's an api as far as I know but I didn't find info on it.
• Can you point me to a widget that has similar structure/needs