Quick Account Switch v1.2

Quick Account Switch v1.2.
by Ianomed

Uses of this hack:

This account will let you string together several accounts owned by the same person. Of course it will also let you string together accounts owned by different people, but that's a dangerous thing to do.

What then is the use of stringing accounts together? Well, this hack will let you switch from one to the other account without having to log out, then log in again. Those interested in the technical aspect I refer to the addition made to login.php, it's all quite simple. You'll see now why it's dangerous to string together your account with someone else's, they'd be able to switch to your account.

I wrote this for two play-by-board RPGs that I frequent, at each of which I have several accounts, an account for each character. This lets me assume another account in moments.

It's also used by admins to switch between test accounts quickly.

Maybe you'll find other uses, eh?

Changes required:

1. Adding of 1 field to user table (installer will try to do this)
2. Adding of 18 phrases (installer does this)
3. An addition to admincp/user.php
4. An addition to global.php
5. An addition to login.php
6. A modification to the navbar template (for each style)
   
   Time needed: 20-30 minutes
   Difficulty rating: moderate

Known issues with v1.2:

Changing the username of an account that's either a slave or master, it does not update these cached usernames. This will be taken care of in v1.3.
Work-around: If you rename a user, unlink it first, and relink after the renaming.
Since I don't see this happening very often on any board I'm releasing v1.2 with this caveat.

Item of note:

For some obscure reason vBportal does NOT play nice with this hack. It'll introduce cookie/header errors. Either do not install this hack if vBportal is installed, or vice versa. Since I don't plan on spending $20 to buy software I'll never use, there's no intention on my part to work out that problem. You're good to go with vbadvanced CPMS, however, this has been tested.

Warranties:

None, in the instructions you'll notice I tell you to backup before applying the hack. I've tested it on 4 boards, each of which have additional hacks installed, and it runs on many more. If it doesn't for you then, well... roll back the changes you've just made and blame yourself.

Tested (and works) on:

• vB 3.0.3. - vanilla
• vB 3.0.1. - vanilla
• vB 3.0.3. - With vbAdvanced Homepage / CPMS (out of the box)
• vB 3.0.1. - With vbAdvanced Homepage / CPMS (out of the box)
• vB 3.0.3. - With vBindex v3.0.0 RC5 (Instructions by bondjetta)
• vB 3.0.3. - Nexialys - ACP cookie hack. <- Recommended combination
• vB 3.0.1. - Nexialys - ACP cookie hack. <- Recommended combination
• vB 3.0.3. - Assorted mods

Future plans:

• v 1.3 - Optionally displaying the linked accounts on the public profile. (i.e. 'I am also ....')
• v 1.3 - Fix user rename issue (see known issues, above).
• v 1.3 - Under Users in the ACP add a Manage Linked Accounts option, listing all linked accounts and their slaves.
• v x.x - Very maybe: allow sharing of a secondary account between two users. This is the trickiest of all, since when on that account, who should you allow switching back to in a way that can't be circumvented.

Future non-plans (I will probably never implement these):

• A 'let users link accounts themselves' mode.

Thanks to Oblivion Knight for the updated dropdown look.

Enjoy

--- History ---
v1.2 - 17th November 2004

• Removed username colouring, it's not really necessary and only adds extra queries.
• No longer uses a custom profile field, instead an extra field in the usertable is made
• Fully phrased, installer written to add phrases
• The usernames for the linked accounts are cached, this means that running the hack now takes no extra queries at all for those logged on as master, or who have no linked accounts. Being logged on as a slave account adds only 1 query per page view, this used to be more too.

v1.1.1 - 27th October

Fixes session expiration problem occuring after switch. Users are encouraged to upgrade. To upgrade follow the instructions in switch_11_to_111.txt. For new installs the corrected code is in switch_111.txt, the installation instructions.

v1.1 - 26th October

Fixes a flaw where on some MySQL versions IDs were matched improperly, also the new session is now permanent. Users are encouraged to upgrade.
To upgrade roll back and redo the changes to global.php and login.php, no changes were made to the template or custom field.

v1.0 - 25th October 2004

initial release

[Ianomed]

Excellent, good to hear that, bondjetta and knight.

[Oblivion Knight]

Just to note that this adds 2 queries to every page, for every user listed in that particular users account master field. So currently it's not advisable to use this feature for many users..

Will this be optimised in v1.2?

[Ianomed]

v1.1 already added the two queries, to make sure no wrong ID was matched.

Indeed, it will be optimised.

In v1.2 it will use all of zero extra queries per page for those online users who don't have extra accounts.

For those online with a linked account (either as the slave account or master account) it'll use a query for each of the additional accounts to resolve the name, and another for the usergroup formatting/colouring.

Possibly I'll be able to optimise that in itself as well. The username can only be changed in two places, I think, ACP and the userCP (if allowed)... so tapping in there to update a cached username for the slave accounts would remove one of those two queries per alternate account.

And a setting for the mod to disable the usergroup colouring in the menu would skip that extra query. It would of course also stop colouring the username

Possibly this too I could cache *thinks* There is the matter of usergroup promotions which would have to be tapped in ontop of the regular usergroup changes, so for the time being I'll more likely make this group formatting a thing you can switch off in v1.2 onwards.

In other words v1.2 will intro two fields to the user table, one for determining if you're the master account to any slaves, if that's empty it'll check if the 'is_slave_of' field is empty as well. If this is the case the script will do nothing more. These fields will be pulled out of the usertable during the init stage, it shouldn't take an extra query

As for caching the username in this setup... that data can be serialised into the 'is_master_of' and 'is_slave_of' fields as appropriate, so it will store the userid you can switch to as well as it's name.

To then further speed it up that colouring can be switched off, people know what account name does what (I should hope). I've added it to the hack for consistency to start with, really.

[Lionel]

this is happening to me with the latest 1.11. But don't go by me as I had my who's online issue in the past.

[Ianomed]

Lionel, I can you try this with a different browser than you normally use? Preferably one you haven't used on your forum yet. Mozilla if you use IE, or vice-versa would do. If this then works, we know it's some cookie debris, and cleaning out the cookies you have for your forum should fix it for you.

If you don't want to go as far as clearing the cookies for your site, you can start with logging out manually via the regular way once, then logging into the master account on your normal browser. If this then doesn't work you're left with only the removal of cookies.

This all of course if you do at all allow a cookie to be set? Dumb question probably, but better to rule out.

So far of all boards who reported back to me one way or the other on 1.1.1, there's 7 on which the timeout problem is gone, to your 1 board where it's not... This really does lead me to believe it's either a residue of your former hacks somehow, or a browser issue.

Since you stated you're happy to run the mod with this 'hitch' you experience I'll try in return to help debug the problem for you best I can. If you know of anything in your setup that would cause this incompatibility I will see if there's something I can do about it, without causing inconvenience to those it works for.

[Lionel]

Thank you. I just installed fireworks. Let us see how it goes. I'll report later on

[Ianomed]

Watch out, you may like Mozilla so much you'll end up a convert as well
It's happened to Caiman recently after he first tried it.

Disclaimer: This message is in no way sponsored by Mozilla.org, they just do that mojo that they do so well.

[bondjetta]

Originally Posted by Ianomed

Watch out, you may like Mozilla so much you'll end up a convert as well
It's happened to Caiman recently after he first tried it.

Disclaimer: This message is in no way sponsored by Mozilla.org, they just do that mojo that they do so well.

that's hilarious

and i have no problem advertising for firefox that program is fantastic!

[bondjetta]

Hey Ianomed: bad news....i'm getting logged out too. not sure what the trigger is, i cleared all etc.com cookies (i'm at work now, FF 0.1.1PR) and every...i'd say 10ish minutes i'm getting knocked out. Mind you I run 2-3 tabs minimum for ETC (2 backend, 1-2 front end) depending on what i'm doing. Might that have some adverse affects?

[Lionel]

me too. In both firefox and IE. This after I deleted all cookies