Today while testing changing username via an API call, I encountered a 422 error when attempting to change the name to a name with a space in it. Digging deeper, I quickly learned that the issue was due to the username restrictions of Discourse. Currently, I’m porting a legacy custom forum to Disc…

AFAIK the options are: remove spaces from names eg “John Doe” becomes “JohnDoe” replace the spaces eg. “John Doe” becomes “John_Doe” IIRC, at first periods in names was not possible, but now they are. If so you could replace the spaces so “John Doe” would become “John.Doe” You should also be awa…

What are you importing from? If you use an import script (or create one using an existing script as a model), usernames will be converted. If you want to do it via the API for some reason, you can look at the code in the import scripts that munges the usernames into something legal.

Thank you for your input. Specifically, I am looking for a creative solution that would work around the username restrictions when accessing Discourse via SSO. The best option so far appears to be: fork the code base, change the username restrictions, and see what happens.

Why would you need to work around the username restrictions for SSO? SSO never looks at the username, it’s OK for users to have a different username in Discourse. [image] jezra: The best option so far appears to be: fork the code base This never is the best option. It’s a recipe for a painfu…

it may be a recipe for disaster, but at the moment it appears to be the only option. When the goal is ‘seamless integration’, it is certainly not OK for the user’s name in Discourse to be different than the name the user has been using for the past 15 years.

Please trust @fefrei (as well as all of us on the team who develop Discourse) that you do not want to fork the codebase. It is a recipe for disaster, especially in regards to security fixes which could become difficult for you to patch if they touch the code you modify to override the username rule…

When it comes to customizing Discourse, you have several general options, ordered here from least to most painful and dangerous: Level 0: “I want to change what it says”: Adjust your admin settings Visit /admin/customize and edit ‘Text Content’ or ‘Email Templates’, which will allow you to replace…

[image] jomaxro: Please trust @fefrei (as well as all of us on the team who develop Discourse) that you do not want to fork the codebase. No argument here, I absolutely do not want to fork the code base. That being said, the closest I can get to my desired level of integration would be to: p…

[image] jezra: Unfortunately, when creating an “@” reply, the Discourse username would be used. Correct, however the autofill will search full names. So I can type @james and @gdpelican will be shown as a suggestion. Not perfect, but I still feel it’s far better than trying to override userna…

I’m not sure I would refer to the guides for writing plugins as “extensive” :slight_smile: but a plugin to over-ride the username validator as well as the method used to mung the username provided by SSO would certainly do the trick. If you have any suggestions as to where I could look for an examp…

Any options for over-riding the username restrictions?

Product Support

jezra (jezra) September 5, 2018, 9:33pm 13

hahaha, that is far better than the results from my search for “plugin custom validator”. My search-foo is weak.

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Any options for over-riding the username restrictions?

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