Joomla/SMF/Bridge User Integration Questions

[KawikaW]

Aloha Everyone,

First post here.  Been using Joomla for a couple months now and I'm getting around to integrating SMF into the mix.  Had a few observations about how users were handled between Joomla and SMF/Bridge and wanted some feedback.

For starters, I wanted to define a few terms to make the correlation (as I see it).
LoginID = the name that is tracked for unique users
DisplayName=the name the user wants others to see
RealName=users legal name

My observations are this:

For SMF, I saw two different fields mentioned.  Membername (which equates to a LoginID), and RealName (which equates to a DisplayName).

For Joomla, I also saw two different fields mentioned.  Name (like RealName potentially??), and Username (like LoginID).

What ties these two together at this point appears to be Membername (SMF) and Username (Joomla).  The feeling that I am getting regarding these two programs, is that there needs to be a common bond (even spreading to other Joomla components/modules) on how to relate to users.  I potentially see the need for the 3 fields as mentioned above, LoginID, DisplayName, and RealName.  RealName would mostly be more of a administrative usage, while LoginID and DisplayName are the more day to day functionality type fields.

What is bringing this about is the usage of the Event Sessions module, that pulls the "Name" field from Joomla to fill in the User information.

Anybody else have any thoughts about this.  The more I think about it, the more I see it that both SMF and Joomla would have to resolve this, with other coders following after.

Aloha,

Kawika

[Orstio]

Users are "tied together" by three things actually.

SMF memberName = Joomla username
SMF RealName = Joomla name
SMF emailAddress = Joomla email

These are important to maintain in this way, because of the way permissions systems in each are handled.

What is bringing this about is the usage of the Event Sessions module, that pulls the "Name" field from Joomla to fill in the User information.

Sessions are not handled very well in Joomla.  They never have been.  The code for the session handling in Joomla is....quite a mess.  It allows you to start a new session each time you logout and back in.  It starts a new session when you login to the admin panel, and leaves the old sessions open.

Instead of the default Events Session module from Joomla, you are much better off using the Whosonline2v1.7 by Kindred, which will show the number of users far more accurately.

[Kindred]

one note.

if you are using the bridge registration component for user registration, the association between "realname"/"username" in Joomla and th SMF DisplayName is determined in the component settings.

I have it set to use realname in the bridge settings..   this way their login ID is the saem (which it has to be) and their display name is the same...
I don't know about 3.20, but previously, if you ste the component to use username as DisplayName, then things got confused, because the user had loginID (both SMF and joomla), Name (which they assumed was display name... but was really for joomla only) and their SMF display name was the same as their loginID...

[KawikaW]

Instead of the default Events Session module from Joomla, you are much better off using the Whosonline2v1.7 by Kindred, which will show the number of users far more accurately.

Aloha Orstio,

This is somewhat in relation to my friend "brother7".  The Event Sessions component is kind of a "guest list for events" component.  In Joomla only (I'll have to test more with the integration), it worked great cause it pulled from what was perceived as RealName.  The user then only had to click on "register".

In the bigger picture, I think it would be good to have at least some of the major players on the same field, as the future developers would follow as that is how the base software would be working.  (I'll have to post this over at hxxp:joomla.org [nonactive] as well I imagine).

Kawika

[KawikaW]

I don't know about 3.20, but previously, if you ste the component to use username as DisplayName, then things got confused

I can see where it would get confusing.  My collection of thoughts are stemming from the fact that you have users that like have their DisplayName be stuff like aQTPy or |3r/\n|)y, stuff like that.  There still is a need to have a "real" name to relate to, which makes situations for both the programmers and the end user alike much easier.

Thanks both of you for the replies.  I guess the next step is to throw out a feature request both here and at hxxp:joomla.org [nonactive].

Kawika

[Kindred]

Well,   if you see the tutorial on adding custom fileds into your SMF profiles, then you could ALSO add a real-name field...  As stored in the DB, it could be called from a component or what-have-you...

[KawikaW]

Well,   if you see the tutorial on adding custom fileds into your SMF profiles, then you could ALSO add a real-name field...  As stored in the DB, it could be called from a component or what-have-you...

Aloha Kindred,

Ok, I'll check that out.  I don't know if Joomla also has the same functionality tho.  In my thoughts going through this, all 3 fields should be on both sides (Joomla and SMF), which I think would be a good start where other developers would start implementing it as well.  Then we would actually have some sort of a standardization in this area.  I guess that is one of the biggest problems with open source, is that most tend to do it their own way.

I do agree with a previous comment above that Joomla user management/login sessions could use some attention as well.

Kawika

[brother7]

Let me chime in with a problem report... perhaps it will help bring focus on the potential problems that can arise.

Configuration
Joomla 1.0.5
SMF 1.1 RC2
Orstio Bridge 3.20 (1/13 release), using SMF registration

Once logged into Joomla, in User Menu - Your Details, it's possible to change "User Name", which is the login name.  For testing purposes, I registered a new user 'user1'.  (PS. I'm using SMF registration and New Account Activation in both Joomla and SMF)  After activating the account and logging in, I went to User Menu - Your Details and changed "User Name" from 'user1' to 'user2'... that change was accepted.  I then logged out of 'user1' and tried to login as 'user2'.  I was presented with the message "Password security has recently been upgraded. Please enter your password again."  After entering the password, I received the message "Password incorrect".  In other words, from the Bridge login, it's not possible to login as 'user2'.

In the Joomla backend, I see that the "Username" is now 'user2'  (the "Name" is still 'user1', as I didn't change that).  In the SMF admin panel, I goto Members - View All Members.  I see 2 relevant entries.  The first has "Username" = 'user1', "Display name" = 'user1'  (I assume this is the original user1 account)  The second has "Username" = 'user2', "Display name" = 'user1'.

If I check the SMF Member listing (the regular one, not the Admin one), I see 2 relevant listings.  Both have "Username" = 'user1'.  However, the bottom one has a registration date of 1969-12-31.

As you can see, this all gets confusing after a while.  If the user management/synchronization between Joomla and SMF isn't kept up, the possibility of duplicate usernames, invalid logins, etc is great.

[Orstio]

After activating the account and logging in, I went to User Menu - Your Details and changed "User Name" from 'user1' to 'user2'...

And there is where your problem arose.

You must make profile changes in SMF after installing the bridge.  Joomla has no way of exporting that data to SMF, but SMF has a way of exporting data to Joomla.  So, username changes should be handled in SMF, not in Joomla.

[brother7]

Ah...

Insight provided by Orstio on how the Bridge works gives a simple explanation to the problem.  In light of this, is it best practice to Unpublish "Your Details" in usermenu?  Can this be automated in future Bridge versions?

[brother7]

You must make profile changes in SMF after installing the bridge.  Joomla has no way of exporting that data to SMF, but SMF has a way of exporting data to Joomla.

I decided to test this...

I logged in, went to SMF's Profile - Account Related Settings, changed the email address and saved the changes.  Then I went into Joomla's backend... the email address for that account wasn't changed.  Thinking that one had to logout and login again for the changes to reflect, that's what I did, but the address still didn't change.  Shouldn't SMF be exporting this data to Joomla, per your quote above?
This could potentially affect any Joomla component that make use of email addresses, even the included Mass Mail component.

EDIT:  To me, it seems that info gets passed from SMF to Joomla upon initial user registration and initial Bridge installation, but when changes are made to the SMF profile, like to the email address above, it isn't passed back.  To further test, I made a change to the "Name" in SMF, with similar results as the email address test above.

[Orstio]

Then I went into Joomla's backend... the email address for that account wasn't changed.  Thinking that one had to logout and login again for the changes to reflect, that's what I did, but the address still didn't change.  Shouldn't SMF be exporting this data to Joomla, per your quote above?

Thanks.  It should definitely be making the change.  I'll take a look at why it is not.

[EDIT] It seems I missed a change in SMF 1.1 RC2.  The new function will be included in the next bridge revision.  Thank you for the report.

[brother7]

Thanks for tracking down the bug   Any idea when the next Bridge version will be released?

Also, I'm still noticing a problem with an empty user being created in Joomla (see this thread for details).  I've created a test site, so that you can duplicate the bug and hopefully track down its cause.

Thanks for all the hard work!