Username Checking

Article Topics: Sites, Members

Username Scripts

NATS can query your local database or password file with a PHP script to see if a particular username exists in your database.

This script should take two variables: a site ID number and a username.

If the username in question exists, the script should return "*exists*"; if the username doesn't exist, the script should return "*available*". For example:

<?php
//pull variables out of query string;
$siteid = $_GET['siteid'];
$username = $_GET['username'];

//initialize password file
$passwordfile = ' ';


//set password file based on site id
switch($siteid)
{
 
 //if siteid = 1, passwordfile = path to password file for site 1
  case 1:
    $passwordfile='/home/web/onesite/.htpasswd';
    break;
 
  case 2:
    $passwordfile='/home/web/differentsite/.htpasswd';
    break; 
}

//now that we know what file to open, open that file to read
$openfile = fopen($passwordfile, 'r');

//get the contents of the open file
$filecontents = fread($openfile, filesize($passwordfile));

//search file contents for username

if(strpos($filecontents, $username)===0) { echo '*available*'; }
else { echo '*exists*';}

 ?>

Email Scripts

NATS can also query your local database or password file with a PHP script that checks if a particular email address exists in your database. This is particularly useful for sites that only allow one member account per email address. If the email address in question exists, the script should return "*exists*" and if the email address does not exist, the script should return "*available*".

If you want to use the user post feature to return an email error, you can return *exists*, email in the response string of your PHP code and NATS will assign the following error:

"Sorry, Email address is already taken. Please Choose Another." to the Smarty variable $errors['email'].

Implementing Your Script

To use your script, go to the Sites Admin and navigate to the Tours tab and select the specific Tour you would like to edit. Once on the tour overview, navigate to the Posts/User Man tab. Here, you will be able to enter your script's URL to make it take effect.

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