Creating unique username with SimpleAuth

[Jed Christiansen]

Hi, everyone.  I recently posted this question to StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18167504/adding-a-username-property-to-webapp2-user-model-after-entity-has-been-created

In a nutshell, I'm already using SimpleAuth and want to edit existing Users to add a unique username.  I see there are methods in webapp2's User model that should allow exactly this, but don't know how to configure them.  I'd appreciate any help/pointers.

(Posted to StackOverflow to give karma there; but happy to get feedback on e-mail, too.)  Thanks in advance for any help!

Cheers,

Jed

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Jed D. Christiansen
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http://about.me/jedc

[alex]

Hey Jed, 

sorry for late reply, just got back from a vacation. I tried to answer it on SO but thought I'd copy&paste it here too:

I think you could extend webapp2_extras.appengine.auth.models.User and add username property, e.g.

from webapp2_extras.appengine.auth.models import User as Webapp2User

class User(Webapp2User):
    username = ndb.StringProperty(required=True)

Then, to create a webapp2 app you'd need a config which includes this:

APP_CFG = {
  'webapp2_extras.auth': {
    'user_model': User,  # default is webapp2_extras.appengine.auth.models.User
    'user_attributes': ['username']  # list of User model properties
  }
}

app = webapp2.WSGIApplication(config=APP_CFG)

Havign the above, creating a new user using the following code will ensure username is unique (ensured by Unique model):

auth_id = 'some-auth-id'  # e.g. 'google:123456789', see simpleauth example.
ok, props = User.create_user(auth_id, unique_properties=['username'],
                                      username='some-username',
                                      ...)

Problem is, with this configuration you are bound to set username during the creation time.

If you wanted to make username optional, or let users set/change it later on, you would probably want to change the above code to something like this:

class User(Webapp2User):
    username = ndb.StringProperty(required=True)

# when creating a new user:
auth_id = 'some-auth-id'  # e.g. 'google:123456789', see simpleauth example.
ok, props = User.create_user(auth_id, unique_properties=[], ...)

Basically, unique_properties will be empty list (or you can just skip it).

Then, in a "change/set username" form handler, you could check if a username already exists:

def handle_change_username(self):
  user = ...  # get the user who wants to change their username
  username = self.request.get('username')
  uniq = 'User.username:%s' % username
  ok = User.unique_model.create(uniq)
  if ok:
    user.username = username
    user.put()
  else:
    # notify them that this username
    # is already taken
    ...

Hope this helps!

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[alex]

Sorry, there was a little mistake. Instead of:

If you wanted to make username optional, or let users set/change it later on, you would probably want to change the above code to something like this:

class User(Webapp2User):
    username = ndb.StringProperty(required=True)

It should be:

If you wanted to make username optional, or let users set/change it later on, you would probably want to change the above code to something like this (no required=True):

class User(Webapp2User):
    username = ndb.StringProperty()  # note, there's no required=True

[alex]

Actually, I've just updated my SO answer with some little more info. It's probably best to look there.