Forum OpenACS Q&A: Removing users

1: Removing users

Posted by Roberto Mello on 01/28/03 03:58 AM

Hi all,

Unless I'm missing something, it seems that we don't have an API for removing a user out of the system.

We have an API for removing persons, but not users. Is this deliberate or just one of those things that didn't get done yet?

-Roberto

2: Re: Removing users (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 01/28/03 05:12 AM

Hi Roberto,

I believe its deliberate. You can however set the user status to delete IIRC. This is due to the fact that a lot of objects ties into the user object. For example what happens to my post in case you decide to delete me?

I was successful though in deleting users, in my case I was sure the the users and its referencing data are to be deleted too. So I deleted the posts, files, etc. and finally the user. I was happy to say due to OACS data model it was easy enough to query the db to delete the related objects. Imagine if it was a mySQL based framework, oh yeah on such a framework they do not care data integrity. They will just outright delete the user and leave the other related objects scattered.

BTW, CCM for some weird reason remove the user status (ban, delete, approve, etc.) :(

I hope you are not looking into this because you want to delete a user in openacs.org :)

3: Re: Removing users (response to 1)

Posted by Gregor Obernosterer on 01/28/03 03:20 PM

Roberto we are having the same problem. I think this causes confusion to the administrators since the user(s) appear in drop down boxes (such as in the group administration) although they have been deleted.

At the time I got the request for this todo I looked into the acs-admin but because of future OACS upgrades I hesitated to customize this. However, now we are most going to redo part of the admin section within the next four weeks. What I could do is to forward those files to you Roberto so you can decide whether this is something we want to use for the future.

/Gregor

4: Re: Removing users (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/28/03 07:50 PM

Gregor ... you might want to contact Lars Pind, who is working on a redesign of admin UI. There's at least one volunteer who's offered to help rewrite some of the admin pages.

I realize your client needs may make it impossible for you to coordinate, in other words that you may need to finish up a quick rewrite in a very short period of time. If that's the case, that's OK of course.

But if you have time to coordinate it might help us in our efforts to rewrite the admin pages so they're actually usable by admins.