Subject: [LON-CAPA-dev] user names, course names, resource names, and passwords

From: Scott Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 14:12:29 -0400

Hi (probably Guy),

I am developing something and very much trying to make it be fully
compatible with LON-CAPA.

What are the length and character set restrictions for the following:

User names (spaces allowed? dashes allowed? ^L allowed?
            greater than 2, less than???)
Passwords (you had mentioned 15 characters)
Course identifiers
Resource identifiers (URL/URI's... yes? so only non-CGI-escape-set characters?)

Regards,
Scott

-- 
Scott Harrison, [email-masked]

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From: Guy Albertelli II <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 02:32:47 -0400 (EDT)

Hi Scott,

>             greater than 2, less than???)

must be \w
at least 1 character

> Passwords (you had mentioned 15 characters)

15 looks like what we trucate at, I don't think there is a restriction
on which characters are valid. (I have tried many symbols but I
haven't tried control characters.)

> Course identifiers

Must be unique, and alpha numeric, and contain the name of the
library server at the end/

> Resource identifiers (URL/URI's... yes? so only non-CGI-escape-set characters?)

URL yes, expected to be like
/res/domain/username/filespec

Should be safe to do spaces and other symbol characters.

I'd suggest when it comes to creation of  users/courses/resources to
continue to use the underlying functions in lonnet/publisher it will
be very troublesome to reimpleent that code and get it correct.

-- 
[email-masked]          BM: n^20 t20 z20 qS 
Guy Albertelli -7-8-3-  O-
    In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence
    with words in the proper order then why can't he?

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From: Scott Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 10:44:09 -0400

Hi Guy,

Thank you very much.

> >             greater than 2, less than???)

Already the same (yeah).

> haven't tried control characters.)

Yes... from the lonnet/lonpublisher code, it looks like every character
is &escape()-ed.  So there is no risk of tainting.  (Just wanted to
verify.)

> library server at the end/

I think I remember now... the actual course identifier
is fairly random looking... like LJKOIJ234ljklkj_msul1 or something.

Is there a separator between the uniquifying string and the library
server name?

> be very troublesome to reimpleent that code and get it correct.

I do not anticipate a scary crossflowing merger of data.  I do anticipate
making it as easy as possible for sysadmins to select to use or not use
various courseware packages underneath the tool I am developing.

And yes, currently, LON-CAPA is the only fully functional solution that, unlike
Blackboard or WebCT, legally allows for adding customized features on top.
And due to its open source nature, it also allows, in a practical sense,
for adding customized features on top.  I preach to the choir....

I am, however, doing "scary" R&D things, so it is important
that the APIs and protocols (even simple things like "user names") be
relatively consistent so that there can

            be multiple possible points of integration.

Which is a good thing.

Source code diving is fun, but I am trying to be clear on the API and
protocols so as to be non-destructive in both ways.

Regards,
Scott