[Mediawiki-l] create, rename a user - external user data base

Wed Dec 21 12:24:36 UTC 2005

Hi,

is there a official of half-official way to rename a user _name_  ?!

Because:
We have to use an external user database with existing (about) 2000 users. 
With the first logon at our wiki a user record will be created with the name taken from the external table.

Only now we realized that there were "bad"  user names, e.g. "X0456" (formerly only a logon name - in MW a apparent name) or "kilroy" (first letter in lower case). Those user names are already in use with a lot of creatings/changes of articles.

Furthermore in this external database a UserID is used - and copied into the MW user table too.

Now we have two situations that claim renaming username:
a) The user wants to do so (because of senseless user name). In that case we could suppress this feature for the future in our external application, but if would be nice to have it.
b) Admins want to do so (because of user names with underscores in the name or first letter in lower case...)

The way _I_ see is: changing all xyz_user_text fields in all tables and rename/redirect the user page article.

1. Would that be stable?
2. Is a way to do so transparently from the MW surface including a SQL script (for admins only)?
3. The function getCanonicalName in AuthPlugin.php can change the user name gotten from external. Is this change persistant in that way that a new created user record would get the "munged" user name?

Thanks.

Uwe (Baumbach)
U.Baumbach at web.de

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