Moodle in English: Create users through MYSQL

Create users through MYSQL

by mart van der niet - Friday, April 15, 2011, 1:47 AM

Can anyone help me with this:

I need to be able to create user accounts with a php-script (in a commercial environment). Nothing fancy, no remote access. The script executes on the same server as the Moodle installation.

Adding a record to mdl_user is not the problem, when inspecting mdl_user the new record is there. But when trying to login as the newly created user, this won't work (invalid login), no debug messages.

For the password I use md5(), so I guess that's not the issue. Are there any other tables I need to update before a user can login? (I assume that mdl_user_enrolments and mdl_user_preferences come into play later.)

Help very much apprecriated !

Re: Create users through MYSQL

by David Meuleman - Friday, April 15, 2011, 3:22 AM

Rather than write directly to mdl_user, I'd suggest using the external database plugin. Have your php script write to a separate MySQL database (can be on the same machine) and set up Moodle to authenticate against it.

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Re: Create users through MYSQL

by mart van der niet - Friday, April 15, 2011, 9:45 PM

Hi David,

Thanks, looks easy enough, I'll give it a try!

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Re: Create users through MYSQL

by mart van der niet - Saturday, April 16, 2011, 12:06 AM

Not so easy afterall:

after setting up when trying out I get:

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) in /home/users/prinqftp/examen.prince2leren.nu/lib/adodb/drivers/adodb-mysql.inc.php on line 365

Any hints I can understand (there are quite a number of entries on this error, but nowhere a straightforward solution...)

Thanks in advance

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Re: Create users through MYSQL

by Fred Woolard - Saturday, April 16, 2011, 1:33 AM

I think your original approach is fine. One thing you may have overlooked is the mnethostid column value. When the manual auth plugin retrieves the row in the user_login() method, it uses the username and the mnethostid column values as constraints, where the user submitted username and $CFG->mnet_localhost_id values are used, respectively.

See auth/manual/auth.php, line 59.

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Re: Create users through MYSQL

by mart van der niet - Saturday, April 16, 2011, 7:00 PM

Yes, I think this should work.I just set the mnethost id value from mdl_config.mnet_localhost_id

Only problem I have now is that I can't supply a password with md5(). I can create and store it in mdl_user ofcourse, but Moodle does not recognize it at login.

When I pass an existing hashed pwd from the db it is stored OK in mdl_user, and login works fine. So obviously I need to salt it in some way, but I can't figure out how to do this. A hint would be appreciated!

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Re: Create users through MYSQL

by Fred Woolard - Monday, April 18, 2011, 11:57 PM

Mart,

I think you'll need to be more specific about what query you are using to insert the user. A simple one such as the following appears to work correctly in Moodle 2.0:

insert into mdl_user (auth, confirmed, mnethostid, username, password, firstname, lastname, email) values ('manual', 1, 1, 'joe', md5('joepassword'), 'Joe', 'Doe', 'joedoe@anonymous.edu')

If you look at the section of code I mentioned previously, you will see that the stored (mdl_user) md5 hash of the user password is compared successively to the submitted password with and then without the $CFG->passwordsaltmain salt, and then again using addslashes() in addition on the submitted password.

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Enrolment

Create users through MYSQL