The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Michael Howe <address@concealed>]

On 06/03/14 12:25, Michael Howe wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> We're currently looking at using Sympa to replace an ageing ezmlm
> installation.  Most of the features are fairly straightforward to
> replicate, but one is causing us to scratch our heads a little: multiple
> email addresses and the web interface.
> 
> Our users can have one or more email addresses, and there is no single
> canonical one.  For example, I might have the address
> 'address@concealed' as my primary address (that is, the one the
> University's mail system will send from, if I'm using that), but
> 'address@concealed' if I also work in the Chemistry department.
>  Any address can be subscribed to a list; we can't force it to simply be
> the primary one.
> 
> We have a SSO system (using Webauth, which basically sets REMOTE_USER to
> the user's username), and we can map usernames to a list of email
> addresses (and even have a reasonable guess at the 'primary' address).
> 
> The sticking point is how to tell Sympa about these addresses.  We're
> currently thinking that we should have a form when you first visit Sympa
> (after logging in) that asks the user to choose their email address, and
> then proceeds using that.  A drop-down box in the header/footer/sidebar
> would let them select an alternate address if they decided part-way
> through their session that they wanted the other address (eg for archive
> access).  Obviously, people with only a single address could skip all that.

The implementation we've worked out is akin to the current netidmap
table, but allows multiple addresses to be associated with a username.
We've patched the do_sso_login function of wwsympa so if the user has
only one address, they are logged in automatically.  If they have more
than one, they can choose from a drop-down list and are logged in using
that one.  They can choose a 'preferred' address, which will be
remembered, and when they log in subsequently it will use that.  I added
an extra logout form and attribute to clear the preferred attribute
(ideally I'd like it to redirect back to to the login form at
$sympa_url/login but haven't worked out how to do that yet) to allow
people to switch users.  We populate the database table from an external
source.

I need to refactor the code somewhat because the database is a bit messy
(and needs some normalization), but I'm happy to provide the patch and
more detailed documentation of how we use it if anyone's interested.
It's fairly specific to our needs so I'm not sure if it's sensible to
include in the core sympa codebase (but that said, it would obviously be
preferable from our point of view).

Michael

-- 
Michael Howe, Systems Development and Support Section
IT Services, University of Oxford