Item2035: Permissions tab doesn't autocomplete for groups

NatSKin has a nice permissions tab in the edit template that autocompletes usernames when choosing "specific users/groups".

However the autocomplete only works on usernames, not groups.

The patch is against JQueryAjaxHelper. Perhaps NatSkin needs its own AjaxHelper topic?

I have some other enhancements to make to NatSkin, too... Easily specify which AjaxHelper you want without hacking the .js would be nice (EG. I am using DBQUERY implementation). And configurable tab fade parameters for one (some PCs take 5-10 seconds to switch tab panes

• JQueryAjaxHelper.txt.diff: Replaced original diff. This one doesn't use USERINFO.

-- PaulHarvey - 11 Sep 2009

Hm, this won't work out. Infact, I do get the groups quite fine, at least those that are defined topic-based, not the LDAP groups. There's no way to do this with tml only afaik. USERINFO comes closest to what we need here... and works on groups as well.

Besides SEARCH does not have an $expand(... or ..) Any other idea?

-- MichaelDaum - 14 Sep 2009

I meant to update that patch back with USERINFO after I realised the format wouldn't expand $expand()

Updated the diff. It shows the first five members of a group.

I don't understand how you are getting group names without changing the search - our group topics in TWiki and Foswiki don't have any forms attached, so USERINFO fails to render anything in the format string?

Edit: Okay, actually I tested on a somewhat clean trunk installation, apparently USERINFO does render topics that have no form attached...

Michael, I'm happy to close with no action if you like. I'll have to go on adventure to find out why our live site doesn't work. And as much as I think it's nifty to get the first 5 members of a group in the drop-down box, it's probably not worth shipping a crazy CALC in a format string if you can avoid it...

-- PaulHarvey - 15 Sep 2009

Interesting SEARCH in your diff. However I'd prefer not to expand the groups to their members. USERINFO does not rely on some UserForm. These two things haven't got anything to do with each other. There is only one corner case when the TopicUserMapping consults the user topics and with it the some attaced form, that is when it failed to get the user's email address from the PasswordManager directly as it is stored in .htpasswd. Only then it searches through the topic and looks for something that resembles an email address...a procedure which is not quite robust nor performing well on a large scale. This is actually on there for backwards compatibility with some very very ancient TWikis (beijing release).

For this autocompletion thing here we still need a better way to expand users and groups independent of the UserMapper that is currently in use. The current version is only working fine of there are physical topics in the Main web ... which is not holding for all UserMappers out there.

Okay I close this item with "No action required" in the lack of a "needs rethinking" state which would be more appropriate for this report.

-- MichaelDaum - 15 Sep 2009