[dev] Objects extending contacts (e.g. Roles)

[Nils Kaiser]

Hello everybody,

I am investigating using horde to build a database for a volunteer 
organization. The central functionality is managing seminarees and the 
different members of the organization. We have a lot of different roles 
and the functionality depends on storing more data for these different 
user types. A user can have different roles, and all users should be in 
the central address book. The information should be stored in different 
tables linked by the user id.

How is such an extension best written in horde? I am pretty sure someone 
has already written an application that needs to extend the user base 
with some kind of roles.

The functionality implies some changes on user creation. I need to 
create the user first (the turba object), and then add my own data in 
the different table). Of course if only the role is added for an 
existing user I only add the new fields. It would be nice to use the 
forms from turba directly, but I don't know how to achieve this.

Can I add the functionality by adding a new module that extends the 
turba functionality or will I have to patch turba? I would prefer the 
first solution to benefit from further turba development without the 
merging overhead. I am pretty sure I will have to extend turba anyway, 
but it would be nice if I can keep the extra functionality outside of it.

Any toughts on this, or even code?

Thx,

Nils