Using acs-authentication you can enable users to self-register using existing accounts located on an external authority.
This external authority may not contain all of the required fields for an OpenACS user. To correctly authenticate it only needs username and password. It does not require email, first_names, or last_name to successfully authenticate a user. A problem occurs if the user authenticates but the authority does not provide the rest of the user information. The current implementation gives the user an error message and they are not allowed to log in.
One way to fix this is to allow users the option to enter this information themselves, as if they were creating a new user account. I have experimentally added a new parameter to the authorities table to configure this on a per-authority basis.
If some of the required information is not provided by the external authority the user is asked to provide this information. Entering email, first_names, and last_name are currently supported in the implementation I have done.
Does this sound like a useful addition? We can default to not allowing user entered information, and provide and identical user experience to what we have now and only allow user entered information if the parameter is set.
