I recently had the task to integrate a SocialEngine installation (4.1.6) with an external user administration system (written in PHP). Social Engine users should be automatically created/enabled/disabled when a user in the external system is created or deleted. In addition to that the passwords should be kept synchronized: i.e. whenever the password of a user is changed in the external system it should automatically be changed in SocialEngine as well.

In order to minimize the efforts I choose the minimal-effort-path: Integration on a database level. I've created the following PHP functions that I'm calling at the appropriate places in my external user administration system. Note the ugly SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX constant that I'm using because Mysql does not support synonyms and I wanted to separate the two systems database wise. Maybe the code helps somebody else that have to deal with the SocialEngine integration in an external system.

/* * creates a social engine user for a given user */ function createSocialEngineUserForSystemUser($db_conn_obj, $userEmail){ //check if the user is already existing $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("select count(*) from ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_users where email = :email"); $stmt->execute(array(':email' => $userEmail)); $numRows = $stmt->fetchColumn(); //looks like there is already an entry for the user in the socialEngine db if ($numRows > 0) { //enable the already existing social engine user $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("update ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_users set enabled = 1, modified_date = now() where email = :email"); $stmt->execute(array(':email' => $userEmail)); return; } // create the user in the open social db // level_id = 4: the default level/role that is assigned by social engine if a new user is created $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("insert into ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_users (email, username, enabled, verified, creation_date, modified_date, timezone, level_id) values (:email, :email, 1, 1, now(), now(), 'Europe/Berlin', 4) "); $stmt->execute(array(':email' => $userEmail)); } /* updates the social engine db with an encrypted version of the given clearTextPassword */ function updateSocialEnginePassword($db_conn_obj, $userEmail, $clearTextPassword){ //retrieve the salt value from social engine $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("select value from ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_core_settings where name = 'core.secret'"); $stmt->execute(); $coreSalt = $stmt->fetchColumn(); $salt = generateRandomSalt(); // see http://modcove.com/knowledgebase-view/cat_id/100000/subcat_id/100003/item_id/100046/ for how Social Engine encrypts their passwords $encryptedPassword = md5($coreSalt.$clearTextPassword.$salt); $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("update ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_users set password = :encryptedPassword, salt = :salt, modified_date = now() where email = :email"); $stmt->execute(array(':encryptedPassword' => $encryptedPassword, ':salt' => $salt, ':email' => $userEmail)); } /* disables a user in the open social database */ function disableSocialEngineUser($db_conn_obj, $userEmail){ $stmt = $db_conn_obj->prepare("update ".SOCIAL_ENGINE_TABLENAMES_PREFIX."engine4_users set enabled = 0, modified_date = now() where email = :email"); $stmt->execute(array(':email' => $userEmail)); }

Oh and if one of the SocialEngine developers reads this: I would recommend switching to a different hash algorithm. MD5 can no longer be considered safe these days.

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Posted by Kai Grabfelder on July 17, 2011 6:42:00 PM CEST #