[Rt-devel] Proposed: RT::User->_LoadOSUserInfo()

[Jim Meyer]

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 at acm.org