Can't add user in anonymous mode to a group automatically

Feature
1

Hello everone!

I’m running a forum with Discourse 2.6.0beta3, and I think I find a bug.

I try to add anonymous users to a group name anons, so I can restrict their posts in some specific categories. I set the group anons to add user to automatically based on the email domain anon.mydomain.

When I enter anonymous mode, I find my anonymous account not be added to the group. However, If I click the Save Change button in /g/anons/manage/membership, my anonymous account can be added to this group. I just want to add anonymous user to this group when entering anonymous mode, without my clicking.

I’ve searched this bug but there’s no useful information. Thank you for your reading!

1 Like
2

I can reproduce what you are finding when a user enters anonymous mode. To have the user automatically added to a group based on the anonymous email domain, I’m having to go to the anonymous group’s management page and save the settings.

I am not sure if adding anonymous users to a group based on the anonymous email domain is expected to work. I can see how it would be useful to have all anonymous users in a group though. The approach of adding anonymous users to a group based on their email domain has been suggested a few times on Meta. An alternate approach would be to add an anonymous mode group setting that automatically added all anonymous users to a chosen group.

Lets see if this is functionality that Discourse wants to support before deciding if it is a bug.

3 Likes
3

I think it would be risky to rely on the anonymous email for this functionality. I think we could consider having another automatic group for anonymous users and add them there automatically.

I don’t consider this a bug though, so I am recategorizing it.

3 Likes
4

Hi, this topic is relevant to an issue I’m having on a forum that I’m helping to set up/administer. Some context: the forum requires people to pay to join as users who can post. We also want paid members with a certain trust level to be able to post anonymously by switching to anonymous mode. Also, we want everyone to be able to read the content (except for like, staff-only stuff obviously).

As I understand it, anonymous users are automatically part of the everyone user group. If we wanted to let the whole world post on the forum, then there’d be no issue of the anons being unable to post. However, because it’s a paid forum, we’ve set the everyone user group to read-only so that the world can read but not post.

We still want users with the required trust level to be able to anonymously post, though. The intended solution was to set up an anonymous user group with permission to write posts and add people based on the anonymous email domain we use at the forum. However, the automatic aspect of being added isn’t working - an administrator needs to go to the anonymous users group and save changes for anons to actually get added. That’s pretty annoying and messes up the flow we’d like, which is that paid member with the required trust level can switch to anonymous mode and have at it as far as posting anonymously.

I gather that having anon users added to a group automatically is a feature that is maybe being considered as an addition to Discourse but hasn’t been implemented yet. Assuming that’s the case, is there some other reasonable way I could configure my Discourse to have the outcome I want, or must I wait on the Discourse gods to hopefully add this feature? Thanks :slight_smile:

5

I wrote a plugin to copy all groups of a user to its shadow when the shadow is created:

Disclaimer: I’m totally new to Ruby, and although it works on my installation, I have no idea if it works elsewhere.

2 Likes
6

+1 for this functionality. Did it ever get implemented? I don’t see it. Or perhaps does someone know of a plugin to do this?

(FYI: I found this, which seems like a decent workaround.)

7

one of my users made a plugin for me to have anonymous accounts automatically added to forum group. here’s my fork on github that i’m using. GitHub - curi/cf-anon-auto-group: Discourse plugin to trigger `user.set_automatic_groups` for anons on login it’s been working fine

we need this to give them the right permissions so they can post anything.

maybe others could use this solution or someone could figure out how to make a more official plugin or merge the code in.

it works in combination with the automatic group membership by email setting (which did not work by itself in our experience):

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8

FWIW, I “solved” this problem in a forum I run on the database level. Only use it if you can’t get other, more high-level solutions to work (has there been any progress in this, or should some existing reply be flagged as “solved”?). Here’s the PostgreSQL code:

create or replace function anon_insert_copy_groups_to_anon_user()
  RETURNS TRIGGER 
  LANGUAGE PLPGSQL
  AS $$
declare
  anon_user_id integer = new.user_id;
  master_user_id integer = new.master_user_id;
  active boolean = new.active;
  created_at timestamp = new.created_at;
  updated_at timestamp = new.updated_at;
BEGIN
  insert into group_users 
        (group_id,                user_id,       created_at,        updated_at,        owner, notification_level,     first_unread_pm_at)
  select group_users.group_id, anon_user_id , current_timestamp, current_timestamp, false, 3 as notification_level, current_timestamp
  from group_users 
  where group_users.user_id=master_user_id
  and   group_users.group_id not in (select group_id from group_users where group_users.user_id=anon_user_id)
  and   group_users.group_id not in (1, 2, 3); -- exlude admins, moderators and staff!

  return new;
end;
$$;

-- Create the trigger
CREATE TRIGGER anon_insert_trigger
AFTER INSERT ON anonymous_users
  FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE FUNCTION anon_insert_copy_groups_to_anon_user();