Mass User Import

[nulltone]

The head admin of my school is going to basically give me a comma seperated database, in text format. This database will have a list of users, and their desired password.
As of now, it is planned that we will only have their name and password, but other information (if nessicary) can be placed in this file.
I have full access to this server (Linux), so I can use mysql on the command line.

1. First of all, is it possbile (through vBulletin, mysql, php, whatever) to mass add users like this? Has anyone made a script? I have done many searches and have found nothing.
2. Of all, how has it been done, or how could it be done?
3. Are there any complications?

Idealy, I would like the user preferences (no to signatures, yes to mail from admin, etc) in that file, but those can be set manually through the mysql command line at a later date.

Keep in mind, the passwords will be in plain text.

[Logician]

You can (should) write a PHP script which will read from your file and update the user table in db accordingly. Since it's only user table there wont be any complications to worry about just dont forget to update your counters after you run the script. In your script you can (should) configure any other field's default value other than username and password.

Keep in mind, the passwords will be in plain text.
They can be plain text in your source file but you have to MD5 them while your scripting is writing them into your db..

[nulltone]

So, I guess suprisingly no one has made this type of script before?
I dont know anything about php, so....I dont know if I'd be able to pull it off..

[matthew tucker]

So ... did you pull it off in the end??

If so, can you share it?

We have an external membership database (filemaker, but could be exported to csv etc) which has personal and membership information; I'd like to mass-import all our financial users and update their records on a monthly basis so that when they become unfinancial they lose certain privileges on the vbboard. (read: incentive to rejoin)

I can do this currently via an expiry date manually entered into admincp for each user, and cunningly interrogated when a user visits the board, dropping them to a lower privilege usergroup id they are not financial. They can also see when they log in how many days left they have on their membership.

But I'd like to do it for all users in an automatic sort of way. :ermm: