change password programmatically

[denniss]

Hi,

I'm using vB 3.5.4. I want to change a user's password 'programmatically' (ie from a php program on the same host, but outside vB).

How do I do that?

Dennis

[Billspaintball]

Originally Posted by denniss

Hi,

I'm using vB 3.5.4. I want to change a user's password 'programmatically' (ie from a php program on the same host, but outside vB).

How do I do that?

Dennis

You cant.

The vB password is encripted.
If you try and change it outside of vB, then vB will not authenticate the new password.

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by Billspaintball

You cant.

The vB password is encripted.
If you try and change it outside of vB, then vB will not authenticate the new password.

This is not true, the password is _not_ encrypted, its hashed twice with a salt once.

[sql]
UPDATE user
set password = MD5(concat(MD5('<NEWPASSWORD>'), user.salt))
WHERE userid = <USERID>[/sql]

i believe I've got marco to thank for this one.

[Billspaintball]

Originally Posted by Zachery

This is not true, the password is _not_ encrypted, its hashed twice with a salt once.

Sorry, bad choice of term on my part.
Maybe I should have just said its not plain text.

[denniss]

By 'outside vB' I mean programmatically through the vB API, but not a vB page per se.

so I am trying to use a function to change the password and I get this error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function query_first() on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/forum/includes/functions.php on line 1600

the function body is this:

function changepassword($newpw) {
global $vbulletin;
$vbuser =& datamanager_init('User', $vbulletin, ERRTYPE_ARRAY);
$vbuser->set_existing($vbulletin->userinfo);

$vbuser->set('password', $newpw);

if ($vbuser->errors) {
foreach ($vbuser->errors as $error) {
echo "<br> error: $error";
}
} else {
// no errors, so save new vbuser.
$vbuserid = $vbuser->save();

}
}