Yahoo Groups Authentication

Its a nice attempt to build such a wonderful code. I admire the developers for that.

I just want to suggest some useful options.

Why not put an option that verifies if an unregistered user is affiliated to a certain yahoo service, let say authenticate if he/she is a member of a certain yahoo group, before letting him/her to register as a Drupal user... I mean add a functionality to the default user module that filters registrant applications - meaning visitors can only register as authenticated user only if he/she has a yahoo account or even only if he/she is a member of a certain Yahoo! Group.

The logic may look like this...

...set different user types for yahoo members, members of a certain group, and ordinary users (users not affiliated to Yahoo!), giving them different priviledges

---/>>> this is sure easy with the current user module///

...when a registrant is on the 'create new user' page, let him select a particular user type he/she wants to apply [sort of some radio buttons or dropdown menu with options such as "Select User Type:
(1) Exclusive members ///member of groups.yahoo.com/blah-blah-blah/...
(2) Yahooligans ///has existing Yahoo acount...
(3) Ordinary users ///who care's about Yahoo s**t....]

---/>>> this is quite headache, cause this means adding an option to a pre configured module which if not possible will bring us to rewriting the whole existing module///

...if the user selects the Exclusive member for example
-> bring him to Yahoo! login page and let him sign-in
-> if he/she can sign in then return the user to a "please wait while we determine if your a member of blah-blah-blah" page, which is a code that sort of pings a certain uploaded file in the groups let say http://groups.yahoo.com/blah-blah-blah/files/whatever.txt and determines if it is accessible through the logged-in yahoo account
-> if the code returns successful then proceed to registration form and verify email and and end
-> if the code returns a 'you do not have the permission...' error then tell the registrant to pay or something like that... just joking....
-> if he/she cannot log-in then echo "morons are not allowed in this site" and then ban the IP address.

...if the user selects the Yahooligans
-> bring him to Yahoo! login page and let him sign-in
-> if he/she can sign in then proceed to registration form and verify email and and end
-> if he/she cannot log-in then echo "try again" or downgrade him/her to ordinary sign-up

...if the user selects ordinary then fine with us

---/>>> that's the whole trick, and its a whole new different module

Admin privileges:

...administrators must always have the capability to set respective privileges for user types

...administrators may wish to have the functionality of adding a yahoo group user type
[i.e. create a new user type>>>
Enter user type label here:_______
Authenticate Yahoo!{unchecked} or Yahoo! Group {checked} Membership
Enter Yahoo Group here{appears only if Yahoo! Group is checked}:______
Enter reference file URL{appears only if Yahoo! Group is checked}: ______
{submit button} Add User Type]

---/>>> this will allow multiple groups to coexist as different user types, and the registrant will have the choice to select from what Group they do belong [or let the code determine from which Yahoo! Groups his/her account belongs automatically during registration, meaning if ping file in group1 is error then ping file in group2 if error then ping file in group3 and so on until the account pings the file in the correct group and fetch the account to its corresponding user types]

Other miscellaneous options I'm dreaming of:

Instant account type Transfer ---/>>> If the user change his/her yahoo ID
Multiple ID registration ---/>>> A user may register all his/her Yahoo! IDs inside a single account and may opt to select which user type he/she will use during login
Automatic login ---/>>> I dont know if Yahoo's Browser Based Authentication program will allow it but its cool if you dont need to log-in to Yahoo! if you're already logged in to your Drupal site.

Of course the Administrator should have the right to enable or disable this options.

Why is this functionality significant?
As we all know a lot of people use Yahoo Groups for organizational purposes. Fansclubs, Class Forums, etc. Like in my case, a professor of mine creates a Yahoo Group for his different classes every academic year and posts announcements there. As the moderator he has the control whether he will allow a Yahoo! ID to join the Group or not, so we're sure that all the members of the Group belong to the same section. If I am to create a site dedicated to my class and want to give exclusive privileges for my classmates, isn't it almost ideal to take advantage of the Y!Groups membership? We can eve have a secure download portal for confidential files since if the files are uploaded to Y!Groups not everybody can access it [is this another module? haha...].

Well, that's just a suggestion... but sure I hope somebody will give it a try. I'm just too busy that I don't have enough time bugging myself about coding it so I shared my idea to everybody. Just please remember that you got the idea from this suggestion after all and before anything else.

Contact me at info dot eee31 at gmail dot com if it so happened that you want to ask something.