Manually Creating Users with Custom unique_id?
Development and Programming
Hey,
I am a “hacker” and have been playing with EE since January. Two of the projects that I have been involved in have required direct data insertion into the EE database.
Slight rant: For the record, I dislike the MIME64 encoding of exp_sites. There are legitimate, if rare, reasons for modifying that table. If one of the reasons is the creation of a cPAddon, the wonderful folks at cPanel Inc. don’t think you should modify database dumps (I did script in a requirement for the entry of a new license key 😛).
My current project involves a mass user import from another database. I have to maintain a sync between these user tables, and it seems like exp_members.unique_id could be used to store the user ID from the imported table. Are there any ill effects to setting exp_members.unique_id with my own unique key?
The wiki for EE 1.x seems to indicate that this would be fine: http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Import_Members/
Thanks!
In answer to my question, yes, it is very possible to use just about any unique_id that you want. You have to insert the user into the database manually (exp_members, exp_member_data) since the EE function do_import() forcefully sets unique_id.
Now, is this a good idea? It depends. The unique_id is used by ExpressionEngine for cookie handling, which means that a logged-in user can learn what his unique_id is. Don’t put any sensitive data into this field if you care about security.