Create new user accounts for anonymous senders

Subscribing, needing same functionality,
greetings, Martijn

This looks like exactly what I was looking for when creating new users from external scripts like shopping carts.

IDEA: If Rules and actions etc. do not work one could create a module from the Listhandler and only use the code that creates a users. Or modify listhandler in such a way that there is a new option e.g. only create user.

Guys, this for me looks like a good document about how to acomplish it. @itserich, you are the one closer to a solution, can you provide detailed steps to how reach that situation? it is very dificult to provide support to something like this considering the ammout of options and modules (or flows) involved, things don't come up to mind just reading two log lines ;)

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JD

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This would be possible with Rules, but...

Rules needs an email and a login name in order to create a new user account, so the node created by Mailhandler must provide this information. You can get that information into CCK fields which Rules can use, but you need to have this issue fixed first: #1394216: More mapping sources for IMAP headers. With that fixed, it would be very simple.

Neat idea, let me know if you need any help.

Another option would be to write a Mailhandler authentication plugin that creates a user account if one doesn't already exist for an email address. The benefit of this is that the node author would get assigned the new user account at creation time, and no extra CCK fields would be necessary (not sure if Rules can set the node author to be the new user account).

As to #1394216: More mapping sources for IMAP headers, I'm not a developer, Dane, so, unfortunately, I'm the one who wont be able to help. All I can do is test how the code behaves with Rules and write a how-to afterwords.

Rules can indeed set the node author to be the new user account (just as long as you have Token module), but the other option you describe (writing a Mailhandler authentication plugin) sounds more promising in what concerns performance. Rules can be quite heavy and demanding, and if you have a cron run throwing 10, 20 or more nodes into a user creation rule, you better have a good VPS or dedicated server, because a simple hosting or even a basic VPS probably isn't going to cut it.

In addition, the Mailhandler plugin option would be more site builder friendly, since it wouldn't require Rules and Token, let alone having to know how to build the rule (which seems to be complicated enough to actually be the issue here). That option would make Mailhandler self-sufficient.

my option

Edit this file sites/all/modules/contrib/mailhandler/plugins/authenticate_plugin/MailhandlerAuthenticateDefault.class.php

<?php
/**
 * @file
 * MailhandlerAuthenticateDefault class.
 */

class MailhandlerAuthenticateDefault extends MailhandlerAuthenticate {

  public function authenticate(&$message, $mailbox) {
    
    list($fromaddress, $fromname) = mailhandler_get_fromaddress($message['header'], $mailbox);
    if ($from_user = user_load(array('mail' => $fromaddress))) {
      $message['authenticated_uid'] = $from_user->uid;
    }
    else {
      // Authentication failed.  Try as anonymous.
            
      $name = substr($fromaddress, 0, strpos($fromaddress,'@'));
      $data = array(
          'name' => $name,
          'pass' => 'password',
          'mail' => $fromaddress,
          'init' => $fromaddress,
          'status' => 1,
        );
        $user = user_save('',$data);
      $message['authenticated_uid'] = $user->uid;
    }
  }

}

FYI, in 6.x-2.5, you can now map the name and email address of a sender separately. Don't know if that helps or not.

Looks like you figured something out. I still think the best solution to this would be to write a custom authentication plugin. Failing that, you could also store the sender name and email address in hidden fields on the created node, then use Rules to create an account based on those fields. But the node will still belong to the anonymous user.