[opencms-dev] Adding Website Membership

[Alexander Kandzior]

Matt,

the "webuser" concept in OpenCms 5 is this:

Usually, only Administrators can create new users. This of course is a
normal security requirement. However, for a website you need something
where a user is able to basically create his own account. 

This is where the webuser concept comes in. There are method in the
com.opencms.file.CmsObject which allow you to add / manage web users.
These users are handled by OpenCms internally in the same table
CMS_USERS like standard users. The only thing really different is a flag
in the DB which tells the system that this users is a web user. Web
users can be created without Admin permission, so a user is able to
create his own account.

Some securiy mechanisms prevent that users flagged as "web users" can
log in to the system. See class com.opencms.workplace.CmsLoginNew for an
example. 

The current User management backoffice "hides" all web users from the
view. This however could be tweaked in the core without to much effort
so that e.g. a button could be added "also show me all the web users".
Again, as the web users share the table with the default users this
should be only a small change, perhaps to the db queries involved. If
you (or anyone else) fells implied to do this please don't forget to
send a patch to me so that I can add it to the next releaase (hint, hint
... ;-)

The table CMS_WEBUSERS was added by a third party who had a developed a
module that requires additional information to the web users. So there
was a relation form the CMS_USER table to the CMS_WEBUSERS table where
the PK was the user id. The CMS_WEBUSERS table only hold additional user
information that might be required by the website application. 

As I already said since the module was unfortunaltly never made
available as open source, we will probably remove the CMS_WEBUSERS table
from the next release since it just causes confusion. However, the
concet of the web users itself is still valid and will remain. 


Best Regards,
Alex.

Alexander Kandzior
Alkacon Software - The OpenCms Experts
http://www.alkacon.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org 
> [mailto:opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org] On Behalf Of M Butcher
> Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 6:46 PM
> To: opencms-dev at opencms.org
> Subject: Re: [opencms-dev] Adding Website Membership
> 
> 
> Thanks... I should have known that the answer would have been 
> posted the day before I joined the list. Serves me right for 
> not reading the archives. Argh.
> 
> So, I've given the website membership thing a lot of thought, 
> but I'm just not sure if I understand it well enough (yet) to 
> solve the problem. There are (at least) two options for 
> giving website users accounts: 1) I can take the 
> CMS_USER/GROUP stuff that is used already, and try to model 
> website users in that context. The other option is to create 
> a completely separate user management system (which is what 
> I'm guessing CMS_WEBUSER was for).
> 
> Website users will probably have to (from time to time) 
> submit stuff to the site, but I'd rather handle that through 
> traditional form interfaces rather than give them access to 
> the CMS interface, so (at this point) there is no need for 
> the website user to be included in the permissions that 
> govern the CMS interface -- which is why a separate user 
> management system is possible.
> 
> If anyone has thoughts on this, or has done something 
> similar, I'd appreciate hearing from you. I'd rather not make 
> a bad design decision because of my own ignorance. ;-)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Matt
> 
> On Sat, 2003-06-21 at 16:08, Thomas März wrote:
> > M Butcher <mbutcher at grcomputing.net> writes:
> > > Not finding anything obvious about this in the OpenCMS 
> > > documentation, I had figured I would just develop my own, 
> but then I 
> > > noticed that there is a table in the database called 
> "CMS_WEBUSERS" 
> > > which happens to have all of the fields I would need anyway.
> > http://mail.opencms.org/pipermail/opencms-dev/2003q2/005421.html
> > 
> > Best Regards,
> > Thomas März
> > 
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> -- 
> M Butcher <mbutcher at grcomputing.net> 
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