Proposed: RT::User->_LoadOSUserInfo()

Hello!

There’s a FIXME in the autohandler with regards to autocreating users
when $RT::WebExternal* is configured:

my $new_user_info = RT::Interface::Web::WebExternalAutoInfo($user);

set the attributes that have been defined.

FIXME: this is a horrible kludge. I’m sure there’s something cleaner

foreach my $attribute (‘Name’, ‘Comments’, ‘Signature’, ‘EmailAddress’,
‘PagerEmailAddress’, ‘FreeformContactInfo’,
‘Organization’, ‘Disabled’, ‘Privileged’,
‘RealName’, ‘NickName’, ‘Lang’, ‘EmailEncoding’,
‘WebEncoding’, ‘ExternalContactInfoId’,
‘ContactInfoSystem’, ‘ExternalAuthId’, ‘Gecos’,
‘HomePhone’, ‘WorkPhone’, ‘MobilePhone’,
‘PagerPhone’, ‘Address1’, ‘Address2’, ‘City’,
‘State’, ‘Zip’, ‘Country’) {
$m->comp(‘/Elements/Callback’, %ARGS, _CallbackName => ‘NewUser’);

my $method = “Set$attribute”;
$UserObj->$method($new_user_info->{$attribute})
if ( defined $new_user_info->{$attribute} );
}

RT::Interface::Web::WebExternalAutoInfo() (called at the top of that
code snippet) fetches username-based info from the operating system; it
uses getpwnam() on Unix-y OSes and has placeholder code for where you’d
pull in info from the Windows PDC but no implementation. I took a run at
tidying this up last week which used RT::User internals, which is a bad
thing to do when you’re not another method on the object.

I was thinking about it over the weekend and wondered why
WebExternalAutoInfo() and the autohandler code above, which is all
pretty strongly linked to the RT::User object, isn’t actually a method
on that object, e.g. $UserObj->_LoadOSUserInfo() or somesuch. If it
were, it could be incorporated in RT::User->Create(), which makes it
useful for all autocreated accounts.

As always, if this seems like a good idea, I’ll offer patches.

Cheers!

–j
Jim Meyer, Geek at Large purp@acm.org