You can retrieve user data in a few ways in your Vanilla community. The method you use depends on which data you want.
Request a user profile data export
You can send an email message to Vanilla Support (support@vanillaforums.com) and request that they pull an export of user profile data and send it to you.
📝 NOTE: The export file type is .CSV.
The export file includes the following information for all users.
- Username
- Email address
- Registration date
- Date of last login
- Last IP address
- # of discussions
- # of comments
- # of points
- Roles
- Rank
- Any Custom Profile Fields you have created in Settings > Membership > Profile Fields
Generate a JSON file of user data and activity
Personal data is stored on each user profile (/profile), and each user profile has a link to the user's posted discussions (/profile/discussions) and comments (/profile/comments).
You can append .json to the URL of these pages in order to access a file of the accessible data on that page, and then download the file and save it to your local device.
📝 NOTE: JSON is a language-independent data format.
Notes
- Data access is governed by Roles and permissions.
- You must be logged in as a trusted user with the appropriate Role in order to access users' personally identifiable information (PII).
- The JSON file will expose only the data that you are authorized to access based on your Role.
To retrieve the JSON file for a user requesting access to their data:
- Sign in as an authorized user.
- Access the user's profile page (e.g., https://success.vanillaforums.com/profile/system).
- Append the URL with .json (e.g., https://success.vanillaforums.com/profile/system.json) and press Enter.
- Right-click the .json page and select Save as… to download and save the data file.
📝 NOTE: JSON files can be opened with code/text editor applications, such as Notepad and Code Writer.
✔️ TIP: You can use this same procedure on the discussions (/profile/discussions.json) and comments (/profile/comments.json) pages.
🛑 IMPORTANT: If you share the data file, do so in a "secure" manner such as using a password-protected file or a trusted service (e.g., Google Drive or Dropbox). Also, be sure to delete the data file from your local device when you no longer need it.
Retrieve user data via Vanilla's API v2
The /users endpoint in Vanilla's API has multiple methods for getting users' data, discussions, and comments.
- To access the complete list of methods for the /users endpoint, see:
- To see a list of the improvements in API v2, check out:
