Feature Proposal: User Data Management API and GUI

Motivation

Currently there is no standard way to display and manage user data. The HtPasswdUser password manager has its own forms to change/reset passwords and e-mails. The OpenIdRpContrib has its own forms to manipulate user data (Ian Kluft spent a lot of time implementing the GUI alone). The LdapContrib has no GUI to manage user data.

The goal of this feature is to define a standard where user data can be managed centrally with a GUI.

This feature was already proposed and accepted at SetFlagtoChangePassword; it is externalized here as a separate proposal because it is a significant new feature of TWiki that raises the bar on usability.

Description and Documentation

Password managers can declare their own data (fields with name, value, type, note) so that TWiki's user manager can show queries and forms to display and manipulate user data in a transparent way. It is a data driven design that can easily be extended.

There are two new pages for admins:

• User Query Page for Admins -- to find a user to manage
• Manage User Account Page for Admins -- to change the account data of a user

User Query Page for Admins

The QueryUsers page is used by members of the TWikiAdminGroup to find a user for account maintenance. This is a non-functional mock-up:

Manage	User Profile Page	E-mail	MCP	LPC	Disabled
edit	AmirShobeiri	amir@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com		2 days ago
edit	ChrisVanDoren	chris@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com		3 month ago
edit	PeterThoeny	peter@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com		2 years ago
edit	SopanShewale	sopan@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com		2 days ago
edit	StefanWalter	stefan@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com		12 days ago
edit	TWikiAdminUser	admin@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com
edit	TWikiContributor	N/A
edit	TWikiGuest	N/A
edit	TWikiRegistrationAgent	N/A
edit	UnknownUser	N/A
edit	VickiBrown	vicki@examplePLEASENOSPAM.com

Total: 12

• MCP: User must change password
• LPC: Last password change
• Disabled: User account is disabled

Manage User Account Page for Admins

The EditUserAccount page is used by members of the TWikiAdminGroup to change user account data that TWiki manages internally. Non-functional mock-up:

User profile page:	SopanShewale
Login name:	SopanShewale
E-mail:	• Separate multiple e-mail addresses by comma or space
Password:
Retype password:	• Leave password fields empty unless you want to change it
	Must change password
Last password change:	2010-09-29 09:47 GMT (2 days ago)
	Disable account • Disabled accounts cannot login but remain in the system
	User account data has been saved

Impact

Implementation

The TWiki::Users::Password base class declares these new methods:

TWiki::Users::Password::getUserData( $cUID ) -> $data

Return a reference to an array of hashes with user data, used to manage users. Each item is a hash with:

• {name} - name of field, such as "email"
• {title} - title of field, such as "E-mail"
• {value} - value of field, such as "jimmy@example.com"
• {type} - type of field: text, password, checkbox, label
• {size} - size of field, such as 40
• {note} - comment note, if any

User management forms can be build dynamically from this data structure. Each password manager may return a different set of fields. If a password manager returns only elements of type label, the form is considered read-only, thus will not show a save button.

Sample data record for TWikiAdminUser:

data->[
    { name => 'wikiname',
      title => 'User profile page',
      value => 'TWikiAdminUser',
      type => 'label',
      size  => 40,
      note => ''
    },
    { name => 'cuid',
      title => 'Canonical user ID',
      value => 'BaseUserMapping_333',
      type => 'label',
      size  => 40,
      note => ''
    },
    { name => 'login',
      title => 'Login name',
      value => admin,
      type => 'label',
      size  => 40,
      note => ''
    },
    { name => 'emails',
      title => 'E-mail',
      value => 'peter@example.com',
      type => 'label',
      size  => 40,
      note => 'Can be changed in ={WebMasterEmail}= configure setting'
    },
    { name => 'password',
      title => 'Password',
      value => '******',
      type => 'label',
      size  => 40,
      note => 'Can be changed in ={Password}= configure setting'
    }
]

This is implemented for SVN:core/lib/TWiki/Users/BaseUserMapping.pm and SVN:core/lib/TWiki/Users/HtPasswdUser.pm

TWiki::Users::Password::setUserData( $cUID, $data )

Set the user data of a user. Same array of hashes as getUserData is assumed, although only {name} and {value} are used.

Sub classes should return an empty string if save action is OK, or an error string starting with 'Error: '.

This is implemented for SVN:core/lib/TWiki/Users/BaseUserMapping.pm and SVN:core/lib/TWiki/Users/HtPasswdUser.pm

USERMANAGER Variable

The TWiki::Users class registeres a new USERMANAGER variable that handles the user query table and the edit user data form:

1. User query table

%USERMANAGER{ action="queryusers" filter="%URLPARAM{ "filter" encode="quote" }%" }%

2. Edit user data form

%USERMANAGER{ action="edituser" user="%URLPARAM{ "user" encode="quote" }%" }%

-- Contributors: PeterThoeny - 2010-10-02

Discussion

I externalized this proposal from existing SetFlagtoChangePassword proposal.

-- PeterThoeny - 2010-10-02

This feature is now MergedToCore and will be available in TWiki-5.1.

-- PeterThoeny - 2010-10-04