Building a thriving online community is one of the most powerful ways to boost user engagement, provide support, and gather valuable feedback. But the thought of developing a forum from scratch—managing databases, user authentication, moderation queues, and scaling infrastructure—is enough to overwhelm any development team.
What if you could bypass that complexity? What if you could treat your community infrastructure just like any other part of your tech stack, managed through clean, simple code?
Welcome to the "Community as Code" philosophy. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use the forum.services.do API to scaffold a fully functional forum in less than 10 minutes. No backend headaches, just pure, efficient development.
Before we dive into the code, let's quickly cover why a forum API is a game-changer for modern applications.
Ready to see how fast this is? Let's get started.
First, let's create a new project directory and install the official forum.services.do SDK.
mkdir my-community-app
cd my-community-app
npm init -y
npm install @do/sdk
Now, create a file named index.js and initialize the client with your API key. This object will be your gateway to the entire forum service.
// index.js
import { Forum } from '@do/sdk';
const forum = new Forum({
apiKey: 'YOUR_API_KEY' // Replace with your key from the forum.services.do dashboard
});
console.log('Forum client initialized!');
A "board" is a category or a section in your forum where threads are organized (e.g., "Announcements," "General Discussion," "Bug Reports"). Let's create one.
// Add this to index.js
async function setupForum() {
console.log('Creating a new board...');
const board = await forum.boards.create({
name: 'Announcements',
description: 'Important news and updates about our platform.'
});
console.log(`Board created with ID: ${board.id}`);
return board;
}
setupForum();
Run this file (node index.js) and you'll see a new board ID printed to your console. You've just programmatically created the first section of your forum!
A forum isn't a forum without conversations. Using the boardId from the previous step, let's post our first thread. This is where the power of a community as a service platform really shines.
We'll use the same code from our hero example, which demonstrates just how intuitive the process is.
// From the setupForum function in Step 3, pass the board to a new function
async function postFirstThread(board) {
console.log(`Posting a thread to board: ${board.name}`);
const newThread = await forum.threads.create({
boardId: board.id, // The ID from the board we just created
title: 'Exciting New Feature Launch!',
content: 'We are thrilled to announce our latest feature that will revolutionize how you interact with our platform.',
authorId: 'u-456-admin' // This would be a user ID from your own application's user database
});
console.log(`New thread created with ID: ${newThread.id}`);
return newThread;
}
// Modify the main function to chain the calls
async function main() {
const board = await setupForum();
await postFirstThread(board);
}
main();
Run the code again. That's it! You've created a board and posted a thread to it with just a few lines of code.
Of course, your users need to see the content. Fetching all threads for a board is just as simple.
// Add this function call to your main function
async function displayThreads(boardId) {
console.log(`Fetching all threads for board ID: ${boardId}`);
const threads = await forum.threads.list({ boardId: boardId });
console.log('--- Threads in Announcements ---');
threads.forEach(thread => {
console.log(`- ${thread.title} (ID: ${thread.id})`);
});
}
// Modify the main function again
async function main() {
const board = await setupForum();
const thread = await postFirstThread(board);
await displayThreads(board.id);
}
main();
When you run the file, you'll see a list of the threads you've created. From here, you can easily loop through this data in your frontend application to render the full forum experience.
You've just scaffolded a forum. But the real power of forum.services.do comes from the intelligent services layered on top.
With our AI-powered moderation, you can configure rules to automatically flag or remove spam, off-topic content, and harmful speech, keeping your community safe without constant manual intervention. Our user engagement platform provides deep analytics, helping you understand what content resonates with your users and who your most valuable community members are.
You've seen how easy it is to build and scale thriving online communities when you adopt a "Community as Code" mindset. With forum.services.do, complex community management becomes a series of simple, repeatable API calls.
Ready to integrate a powerful, scalable forum into your application?
Sign up for your free API key at forum.services.do and start building!