[IRCServices] RE: my recent feature request

[youph at earthlink.net]

Chris Jenkinson wrote:

>On Wed, January 12, 2005 6:25 am, youph at earthlink.net said:
>  
>
>>I would like the ability for Services Admins to be able to set a user
>>password using an MD5 hash, when using MD5 encrypted passwords with
>>services. Normally, a user registers a nick and provides a plaintext
>>password. This plaintext pass is then hashed and stored in the db (if
>>encryption is enabled which I am saying is true in this instance.) I
>>would like the ability for Services Admins to be able to *directly* set
>>this parameter in a nick record. I.E. I would like to be able to change
>>the *hashed* passwords of users. The only command for dealing with MD5
>>passwords is resetting. It would seem trivial to add the ability to
>>simply overwrite the MD5 hash parameter in the nick record. The reason
>>being I am trying to automate a registration process that starts with a
>>web forum registration and will (hopefully) also register a nick name on
>>IRC for the user. I would only have the MD5 hash of the user's password
>>though, which leads me to this request.
>>    
>>
>
>Kind of off-topic here and out of curiousity, how do you aim to handle a
>situation where someone registers an account on your website which isn't
>usable as an IRC nick (for example "Hello Bob")? I've been considering a
>problem like this for some time and I'd like to see how someone else is
>aiming to do it.
>
>Chris
>
>  
>
Chris,

I realized my response to your question was incomplete so let me expound 
further.

The general idea for validating a user name from our bulletin board 
software would be something like this:
a) check length against max nick length and shorten as required
b) search for incompatible characters such as * or @ in the user name 
and simply remove
c) check for space in the user name and replace them with and underscore 
character _
d) remember this nick (if it differs from the user name for the forums) 
and email the nick with instructions on how to connect to IRC to the new 
user
I may have forgot some details but it’s totally doable.