[dev] Session prefs for guest users

[Jon Parise]

On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 02:55:15PM -0400, Chuck Hagenbuch wrote:

> > We have several applications for which it would be nice to allow even
> > guest users to set their preferences on.  What about the idea of
> > creating a special guest account (not sure what the username would
> > be...maybe configurable in horde's conf.php).  This account could be
> > specifically set up to use session prefs or no prefs (again conf.php)
> > regardless of the backend other users have.
> 
> I see a few possibilities:
> 
> 1. Have a config option in horde/config/conf.php for giving guest users 
> session preferences.
> 
> 2. Automatically give guest users session preferences.
> 
> 3. If the prefs store is 'session', give guest users session prefs.
> 
> I don't think it makes sense to let guest users have anything other than 
> session prefs.

I think, ideally, we'd be able to group users into "classes".  There
would be a common default class (akin to what we implicitly have now
- global site settings), and each additional class could selectively
override a default global option.  One of these options could define
the preferences driver.

This would likely be an extension of the groups / perms system, but it
differs in that it could be used to specify configuration settings.

The tricky part is determining the class of a user that hasn't already
logged in to the system.  Perhaps users that haven't logged in would
be considered members of the "guests" class or a new "unknown" class.

Just some spontaneous thoughts on the subject, inspired by BSD login
classes[1].

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=login.conf&sektion=5&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+4.6-stable

-- 
Jon Parise (jon@horde.org) :: The Horde Project (http://horde.org/)