Thread

Hi.

I’m wondering if there is a way to allow members to use same screen name? I’m using the [screen_name} for the member’s full name and there might be a risk some users have the same full name.

Thank you a lot! 😊

I am bumping this old thread since no one replied and I’d like to know too!

No, uniqueness is enforced with screen names, just as with user names. Could be potentially very confusing otherwise.

Hi, I really need to allow people to have the same screen name. (tbh I don’t understand why a screen name would need to be unique!  surely that’s what the username is for!?)

I’m going to have to hack core files to allow this. I have no other option - my client requires heavily customised member registration and management.

My question is what implications/caveats should I / do I need to be aware of?  What is the screen name used for? (other than displaying on screen!?)

Actually, I think you should have a look at Solspace User module. It allows you to store the screenname in a custom field so there is no restriction on it.

I can’t answer the question on what caveats (if any) there would be in doing what you are about to do other than it won’t be supported obviously and you are going to need to ensure that you remember to add in any modifications you make each time you upgrade but my question would be to something you said near the end of your post.

”…other than displaying on screen”

I think the confusion would very quickly arise depending on how you are using the users screen names (if you are using them that is?). If you had 10 people with the same screen name all posting comments then to anyone who didn’t realise what was going on it could all get a little confusing.

Also if you don’t want to display the screen name somewhere on your own created templates then you don’t have to.

Of course I have no idea why you need this functionality so my post may or may not add anything to this but just wanted to point out one possibly confusing use.

Hope you get something sorted for your own usage though.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi, thanks for the input guys.

Basically what we’re doing is using the EE member registration procedure for the registration of runners for a HUGE (~10,000 people) athletics event (each runner is registered as an EE member, as well as added to a standalone management system via an API). Obviously the event registration requirements are quite different to the default EE requirements so we’ve had to write extensions to accommodate this. We don’t really have any need for a screen name other than displaying “Welcome <your name here>” to logged in members - it’s entirely for the individual end user’s eyes - no commenting or anything like that required - but it is a requirement of the EE registration procedure.

Basically, I’m just after a bit of direction from an (more) experienced EE developer as to what the best direction is to take.

As it stands, I can see we have a couple of options:

1. Add a hook to the members class to allow duplicate screen names.
2. Populate the $_POST[‘screen_name’] with md5(time()) in the member_member_register_start hook and abandon all use of {screen_name}

I’m just not quite sure which is best!

Any input welcome.

M

Hi, I really need to allow people to have the same screen name. (tbh I don’t understand why a screen name would need to be unique!  surely that’s what the username is for!?)

Well, no: if there is an article, or comment, or forum entry signed by “John Doe”, is it really feasible to expect there to be any number of users going by that name? As I’ve said, quite confusing at the very least.

In your case, why not use custom member fields? The screen name doesn’t have to be “Firstname Surname”, does it?

Hi Ingmar,

We’re not using EE as a blog so there will be no “articles”, “comments” or “forum posts”. The only reason we’re even using EE for signup is so that we can serve different content to logged in users.  We have absolutely no use of the screen name, next to no personal data is stored within EE instead being updated/retrieved via API calls to our standalone (an CI app, EE2.0 Hurry up!!!) management application.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I should just populate the $_POST[‘screen_name’] with a random string, just to satisfy EE - but to be honest, this grates with me as I have to populate a DB field with absolute rubbish just to satisfy EE. With ~10,000 - 15,000 members registering on the site this is an overhead we could do without! I’d really rather just allow duplicate or empty screen names.

We’re not using EE as a blog so there will be no “articles”, “comments” or “forum posts”.

Yes, I’ve seen that, but in many cases there will be. I just tried to explain why screen names, too, need to be unique, in my opinion.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I should just populate the $_POST[‘screen_name’] with a random string, just to satisfy EE ...

Actually, if you don’t, I think the username is used automatically.

I’d really rather just allow duplicate or empty screen names.

Unfortunately that’s not an option at this time without hacking.

Haha! I’ve clearly been being completely thick! Regardless of whether the username is used as screen name if no screen name is supplied, I could just populate $_POST[‘screen_name’] with the contents of $_POST[‘username’] (in fact we are auto-generating user names, but nevertheless…)!

No need for populating with absolute rubbish!

Just one further point, with regard to Ingmar’s last post.

One argument frequently presented in reply to a large number of queries on this forum is that Expression Engine does not dictate how or what it’s used for (especially with regard to navigation etc). However having no option to allow duplicate screen names seems to be a bit of a contradiction. Agreed, in the normal application of EE as a blog it could get quite confusing if many members share the same screen name, but isn’t that ultimately the developer / clients decision?

At the end of the day, in essence it’s just content - and I’d quite like to manage my content however I wish to - that is after all the main reason for using a “flexible” content management system such as Expression Engine.

Anyway - just an observation, I’m not looking for an argument!

Would this be worth raising as a feature request?

Cheers.

M