Discourse Collections

For more information, please see: Discourse Meta - Collections

This plugin allows users to create collections out of topics, by creating a list of links. If the link is a topic, the topic is attached to the collection and automatically views all of the list.

Users can only add their own topics to the collection, and must add maintainers to allow others to add theirs to the same collection. Users can organize the collection via section headers (optional). A Collection must contain at least one topic.

Users can also create subcollections, collections that are tied to only a single topic. This does not create any additional associations, and can coexist with a collection. Sections can be disabled via the site setting sections_in_subcollection

Example Collection

// Collection

# Header 2

- Topic A
- Topic B
- Topic C

# Header 2

- External Link
- External Link

// Subcollection for Topic A

- Post 1
- Post 20
- External Link
- Topic X

In this setup, Topic A, B, and C will have the main Collection visible and attached. There will be two sections.

For Topic A, there will be an additional section that displays the subcollection. No association to Topic X is created.

Architecture

Plugin created a collections table and uses custom fields on Topics to manually create associations.

collections

column	type	comment
id	integer primary
title	string	optional title (collection only)
desc	string	option description (collection only)
user_id	integer	owner of the collection
mantainer_ids	integer array	ids of users who can add/edit the collection
is_single_topic	boolean	if true, is considered a subcollection tied to a single topic
created_at	timestamp
updated_at	timestamp

collection_items

column	type	comment
id	integer default
collection_id	integer fk	id of the collection
name	string	custom name of the item
icon	string	custom icon of the item. can be empty
icon_type	integer enum	icon emoji square
url	string	URL of the item
is_section_header	boolean	true if item is actually a header (no url allowed)
position	integer	position of item in collection
created_at	timestamp
updated_at	timestamp

Topic Custom Fields

possible key values are:

• collection_id - Attached to topics found in the URLs of Collections
• subcollection_id - Attached to only the Topic containing the Subcollection