Account Switch Primer

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Tue May 21, 2002 11:40 pm

The purpose of this mod is for people to be able to link several account together, and easily switch between them all. Here's the super-quick primer on what you need to do to get started:

Pick an account

There isn't really a primary account with this setup, but you have to start somewhere. Go into the profile for the account. Scroll down a bit and you'll see a new section that says Account Link. Off to the side, there is a little text that says 'Click here to obtain a PID'. Click there

You'll be on a page caled PID Request. Enter the usename and password for the account you are in, and then a 5 digit Personal ID. Its a stupid script, if your PID is taken, all it will do is say sorry, that's in use, try again. If its not taken, the script will say your profile has been updated, and set your PID in the database. Remember that PID

Link an account

Log out of the account you just set your PID in. Login to an account you'd like to link to the first. Go into your profile, and scroll down to Account Link, but instead of clicking to get a PID, you will enter the Username and Password of that first account, and the PID you just set. Submit the profile, and now when you go to the Index, the Switch jumpbox in the upper left should have the two account names listed in it. You can now link any number of accounts with your PID and a username/password pair of an account that you have already linked.

Switching Accounts

Go up to the dropbox in the upper left, choose which linked account you want to switch to, and hit Switch. That's it. The account you were in is logged out, and the one you picked logged in.

JohnnyRico · Post by **JohnnyRico** » Wed May 22, 2002 1:54 am

Wildfire, you Rock!

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Wed May 22, 2002 7:20 am

If I ever have a baby girl, it will be named Sara.

Sorrow · Post by **Sorrow** » Wed May 22, 2002 8:11 am

All over the PHP burnout, are we? You rule.

Ryan Murphy · Post by **Ryan Murphy** » Wed May 22, 2002 7:13 pm

Sweet Jesus, I love you Wildfire

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Wed May 22, 2002 10:34 pm

Thanks guys

Actually, this was the cause of PHP burnout for a while, coding it and trying to keep it simple so that it can go into the phpBB Community Mods. (Which, hopefully will go through soon). Got a few other web projects I'm behind in, and some non-coding projects to finish, and I'll be back working on the Suggestion list.

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Wed May 22, 2002 10:36 pm

Thanks guys

Actually this was the cause of earlier PHP burnout, tweaking it and documenting it for submission to the phpBB Community. Got a few projects both coding and not I've been neglecting, but I'll be back working on the Suggestions list soon.

Thorn · Post by **Thorn** » Thu May 23, 2002 1:21 am

So, uh, that was an order for buckeyes at the Gathering, right?

*Thorn goes to start buying ingredients for 8 kabillion buckeyes.*

Memory · Post by **Memory** » Thu May 23, 2002 10:22 am

Two Questions:

1) What is a 'Buckeye'? Dare I ask?

2) Why won't the board let me enter the same email address for multiple accounts? Is it used as a primary key? Or just a security feature, so I can't enter someone else's email by mistake?

3278 · Post by **3278** » Thu May 23, 2002 10:31 am

Memory wrote:2) Why won't the board let me enter the same email address for multiple accounts? Is it used as a primary key? Or just a security feature, so I can't enter someone else's email by mistake?

Shit. I knew there was something else.

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Thu May 23, 2002 12:43 pm

Buckeyes! ^_^ Loverly concoctions of chocolate coated peanut butter with extra sugar...yummy

Email addresses, er, all my accounts have the same email address, possibly a 2.0 and higher feature that got turned on by default on upgrade?

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Thu May 23, 2002 1:30 pm

Question: Is there any way where the account switcher can be expanded so as to have the option of an autologin switch? Now if I use it, I am always logged out at the end of a visit to bulldrek.

Memory · Post by **Memory** » Thu May 23, 2002 1:32 pm

Wildfire wrote: Email addresses, er, all my accounts have the same email address, possibly a 2.0 and higher feature that got turned on by default on upgrade?

Noting 3-2's reaction I'm guessing it's going to be turned off again.

Any chance you can let me know when this has happened?

3278 · Post by **3278** » Thu May 23, 2002 1:33 pm

I've been thinking about that, too. It'd be nice if it would detect the state of the checkbox initially, and save that across accounts, but if not, it'd be nice to just default to autologin. Of course, people on shared machines would want to make sure they log out...

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Thu May 23, 2002 4:51 pm

Actually, wouldn't be too terribly hard, have to move autologin to a profile field, and if its set to "On", the switch will set that flag when it starts the new session. Will require you set autologin to "On" for every account, but should work. I'll get back to that sometime soon.

Bethyaga · Post by **Bethyaga** » Thu May 23, 2002 7:13 pm

Thank you, Wildfire.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Thu May 23, 2002 7:17 pm

As far as I'm concerned, we could leave it on permanently for everyone, like v0.2. Then people just need to log out if they're leaving the machine. But that's just me. Maybe we could vote, if I'm not the only person who feels that way.

Mike Jones · Post by **Mike Jones** » Thu May 23, 2002 7:21 pm

3278 wrote:As far as I'm concerned, we could leave it on permanently for everyone, like v0.2. Then people just need to log out if they're leaving the machine. But that's just me. Maybe we could vote, if I'm not the only person who feels that way.

I agree.

[PS--I love account switching.]

Sorrow · Post by **Sorrow** » Thu May 23, 2002 10:24 pm

So what you're saying, 32, is that if I just close the browser window, I'd still be logged in when I open a new window later and head over here?

Hmmm ... not sure about that. When I'm at work I don't always remember to log out; I may just ALT+F4, lock the workstation and go.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri May 24, 2002 1:19 am

Sorrow wrote:So what you're saying, 32, is that if I just close the browser window, I'd still be logged in when I open a new window later and head over here?

Hmmm ... not sure about that. When I'm at work I don't always remember to log out; I may just ALT+F4, lock the workstation and go.

Well, that's the problem. Same as it was on v0.2, if you recall. If for no other reason than I'm used to it, I don't mind. But I generally only login from secure locations, so...

Sorrow · Post by **Sorrow** » Fri May 24, 2002 11:46 am

Been a while since I've logged into v0.2

Actually, it's probably not a problem, since the workstation's generally locked if I'm not there.

Thorn · Post by **Thorn** » Sat May 25, 2002 1:01 am

I like the all autologin all the time option too. For those of us who share computers with people we can trust, it's all fine. grin!

Wildfire · Post by **Wildfire** » Wed May 29, 2002 12:51 am

a 5 digit Personal ID

Just a reminder, your PID MUST be 5 digits, as in the 0 through 9 variety. Also '0' is no longer a valid PID, its being used as an error check condition. I believe those affected by the verification code change have already been notified.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:09 pm

Front page bump

Daki · Post by **Daki** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:57 pm

Missed this the first time through but appreciate the bump. Now Gunny and I can switch accounts easier. Arigato Gozaimasu WF. *bow*

Bishop · Post by **Bishop** » Tue Oct 07, 2003 9:38 pm

Thank you thank you thank you

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 6:57 am

Could the account-switch combo-box be sorted by something that makes sense?

3278 · Post by **3278** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 9:56 am

What the devil is it sorted by now? It's neither alphabetical nor chronological, but it's always in the same order.

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 10:04 am

Exactly my bafflement.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:58 pm

Its a very stupid query that simply says give me accounts with the PID, so however they are sorted in the user table (generally, but not always, by user_id) is however it gets displayed. Did you want it sorted by something in particular?

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 3:09 pm

Preferably...

[current username]
-----------------------
[username1]
[username2]
[username3]
[username4]

...but I'll settle for alphabetically.

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 5:14 pm

Alright

Its due for a rewrite anyways with some better redirecting, I'll make it sort intellegently, at minimum display current username first and the rest alphabetically.

~m~ · Post by **~m~** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:49 am

I'm trying to install this switch on my own phpBB - I know this isn't a support forum for this hack, but I'm having lots of problems and don't know where else to go for help!

So far I've dealt with one problem, which was that when I was trying to assign a PID to an account I was getting the following error:

"Sorry, Personnel IDs must be numerical in value. Please go back and try again.
DEBUG MODE
SQL Error : 1064 You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1"

This was fixed using some code suggested on the forums at phpbbhacks.com:

In pid.php, replace:
$pid = (ereg("^[0-9]+$", $pid)) ? $pid : '0';

with:
$pid = (ereg("^[0-9]+$", $HTTP_POST_VARS['pid'])) ? $HTTP_POST_VARS['pid'] : '0';
$username = isset($HTTP_POST_VARS['username']) ? trim(htmlspecialchars($HTTP_POST_VARS['username'])) : '';
$username = substr(str_replace("\\'", "'", $username), 0, 25);
$username = str_replace("'", "\\'", $username);
$password = isset($HTTP_POST_VARS['password']) ? $HTTP_POST_VARS['password'] : '';

So now I can assign a pid to an account. However, I still can't manage to link one account to another. There was a suggestion on the same discussion at phpbbhacks.com (which you can see here: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34389 ), that this is something to do with an unassigned variable or two.

Can anyone help with this? Please feel free to pm me rather than clogging up this board with technical discussions, if you'd rather.

Many thanks in advance.
~m~

DV8 · Post by **DV8** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:23 pm

~m~ wrote:$pid = (ereg("^[0-9]+$", $pid)) ? $pid : '0';
...
$pid = (ereg("^[0-9]+$", $HTTP_POST_VARS['pid'])) ? $HTTP_POST_VARS['pid'] : '0';

Try and taking the quotations from around the 0, otherwise it'll treat it as a string instead of a numeric value.

~m~ · Post by **~m~** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:35 pm

Thanks - I tried that, but still no joy

Just to clarify, my current situation is that I have 2 accounts, one has a pid assigned (I have checked that it really is assigned, and really is the correct value, by looking at the database directly).

The second account has no pid. When I go in to the profile of the second account and try to link it to the first, it claims it has linked properly (I get the "your profile has been updated" message), but the accounts don't link.

When logged into the first account, which has a pid, that account is visible in the account switch box at the top of each page, but the second account isn't. When logged into the second account, there are no options listed in the account switch box.

~m~ · Post by **~m~** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:48 pm

Something has occurred to me, that fits with the comments on phpbbhacks.com that it might be something to do with undefined variables.

When you enter your username, password and pid of the account you want to link on the profile page, the variables are called linkname, linkpass and linkpid, respectively.

The form action is "login.php", but when I look through login.php, none of the Account Switch variables, linkname, linkpass, or linkpid, are mentioned anywhere. I'm guessing they should be? So does login.php need to be altered somehow?

This is just a guess on my part, though - I could be totally wrong!

Thanks again

~m~

Kai · Post by **Kai** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:33 pm

Best guess is that between versions this was tested on, phpBB discontinued the use of register_globals, meaning variables are handled in a completely different manner, which may cause things to not work.

~m~ · Post by **~m~** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:37 am

That's not good news!

If anyone has any idea how I can fix this I would be so grateful!

Thanks,
~m~

~m~ · Post by **~m~** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 10:22 am

In case anyone else is interested, I have finally solved this problem, and posted the full solution here:

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=190591

~m~