Hello!
This is bound to be a bit long. I apologize and will strive to be
concise as well as informative
Here’s all the places I’ve found which create users and how they go
about it; rather than quote 10-30 lines of code per instance, I’ve
boiled each down to a shorthand indicating how the RT::User object is
created and how Create() is called.
RT::Interface:
:CreateUser
grep -r show no usage in ${RTHOME}/lib or ${RTHOME}/share/html
RT::User->new($RT::SystemUser)->Create(Name => ($Username || $Address),
EmailAddress => $Address,
RealName => $Name,
Password => undef,
Privileged => 0,
Comments => ‘Autocreated on ticket submission’)
RT:
:Create
$watcher is an email address of a Requestor, Cc, or AdminCc
RT::User->new($RT::SystemUser)->LoadOrCreateByEmail($watcher)
This is the sole caller of LoadOrCreateByEmail. Expanded to include
that function and noting that we pass nothing but email address,
this is really:
RT::User->new($RT::SystemUser)->Create(
Name => $watcher,
EmailAddress => $watcher,
RealName => $watcher,
Privileged => 0,
Comments => ‘Autocreated when added as a watcher’);
RT::Queue::_AddWatcher
my ( $Address, $Name ) =
RT::Interface::ParseAddressFromHeader($args{‘Email’});
RT::User->new($RT::SystemUser)->Create(
Name => $Address,
EmailAddress => $Address,
RealName => $Name,
Privileged => 0,
Comments => ‘Autocreated when added as a watcher’);
share/html/autohandler
Called only if you’re using the WebExternal*
RT::User->new(RT::CurrentUser->new(‘RT_System’))->Create(
%{ref($RT::AutoCreate) ? $RT::AutoCreate : {}},
Name => $user,
Gecos => $user,
);
…then call Set methods (e.g. SetName, SetComments, etc.)
to add info from OS via RT::Interface::Web::WebExternalAutoInfo
share/html/Admin/Users/Modify.html and
share/html/REST/1.0/Forms/user/default also create users, but they’re
in response to explicit requests rather than autocreation.
Some observations:
- All instances of user creation are invoked by the RT System user
- All except the autohandler could call LoadOrCreateByEmail()
- All except the autohandler contain hard-coded defaults;
these defaults are mostly consistent but vary slightly.
I’d like to propose a generalized RT::User->LoadOrCreate() function
which can be passed a pile of user info and told which piece to
attempt to load by; it would honor $RT::AutoCreateUserInfo to set any
user info which wasn’t passed in by the caller. The interface might
look like either of these:
$UserObj->LoadOrCreate(‘Name’, $user_info_hashref);
$UserObj->LoadOrCreate(LoadBy => ‘Name’,
Name => ‘purp’,
EmailAddress => ‘purp@acm.org’,
…);
(I like the latter for readability)
LoadOrCreateByEmail() would then be a thin wrapper to LoadOrCreate();
LoadOrCreateByName() could also be such. Failure modes would be
essentially the same: if you attempt to create a username which
already exists, you fail; otherwise, there are no guaranteed unique
attributes. It seems like it should require either an email address or
username, but I supposed it’s possible to create a user who doesn’t
get email, so…???
Sound reasonable? I’d love to hear comments. Meanwhile, I’ll be
finishing an autocreation implementation/overlay/patch tomorrow; if we
can nail these details down quickly, it’ll be something worthy of
sharing.
Thanks!
–j
Jim Meyer, Geek at Large purp@acm.org