Forum OpenACS Development: expanding the default login page (docs?)

Hi folks

I can't find any documentation on modifying the default login/new user page -  Are future upgrades my only consideration in modifying the users table to include more demographics?

Thanks!

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Posted by Jade Rubick on
I hope someone else answers your question, but my first response is:

I wouldn't modify the users table to include more demographics.

I'd create a separate table, and maybe even "subclass" users.

Haven't done this before. Maybe someone else can help?

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Posted by Alan Luck on
I can see its RTFM time.  😊

Thanks for the info!

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Posted by Matthew Geddert on
I'm doing this for our site right now. I have created a contacts application that stores whatever i want it to store on users. I am integrating this appliction into the regular login page, so we can get things such as the country they are signing in from on the general registration page - and then when they fill out other forms throughout the site it automatically presents them with the info they had previously entered... its actually pretty complex and taking longer then expected, but if you want me to email you an pre-alpha version of the software i'll likely be able to within a week or two.

This system may very well be overkill for your needs, so if you just want, for example, addresses and telephone numbers i recommend downloading telecom-number ref-itu and postal-address from CVS HEAD (aka OpenACS 5.0) and using those apps. My contacts app uses these tables to store data such as this for users, and they are made to store these extra types personal information.

If those packages don't cover all the things you want to collect i would also recommend creating a seperate table and not modifying users... unless you can use the general attribute storage mechanism - which may work for you. An example of something that uses that system are users "bios" if you want to look at the code. If you don't modify the core data model it will make upgrading to new releases of OpenACS much easier in the future.

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Posted by Alan Luck on
That would be great, I'd love to see this functionality you've come up with - thanks alot for all the info, I may end up doing the latter but I'd still like to see how you do it.  Thanks again!
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Posted by Keith Paskett on
Wow! I found a thread discussing just what I'm interested in and it isn't three years old. I would like to know what you (either of you) settled on. If you have an app you would share, that would be great.
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Posted by chekuri gautam on
I am new to openACS (have been 'experimenting' with it) and I  customized the login page that I got from OpenACS 5.0.4 for a small HR application I am building, by customizing the script at /packages/acs-subsite/lib/login.tcl

I added a few ifs that used exists_and_not_null to check if certain parameters were sent to it and set up ad_form accordingly. After that I checked for the those parameters in the -on_submit of the ad_form. Hence I could get/set stuff from/to my app's realtions with out touching OpenACS data model. While doing an <include src=> in my app I would simply
set those parameters. The default login page still works like before and yes.. if the user choose to login via the default login page, and not my app's home page, then when the user visits my app's home page for the first time, he/she has to choose certain things before proceeding.