[Typo3-dev] Event System in the core / Ease the integration of 3rdparty apps

[Leendert Brouwer [Netcreators]]

Hi Andy,

"Andy Staudacher" <ast at gmx.ch> wrote in message
news:mailman.173.1094143214.17640.typo3-dev at lists.netfielders.de...
> One aspect of the integration is the user / group management. Both, the
> CMS and the 3rdPA, have their own user/group management. Now we have two
> options:
> A: Use both user / group / usergroupmap database tables in parallel:
> __A user creates an account in the CMS. When he first browses to the
> 3rdPA module, the module checks if this account already exists and if
> not, creates a 3rdPA account for this user.
> __Problems: If the user changes his account in the CMS or in the 3rdPA,
> the user accounts of CMS/3rdPA get out of sync (i.e. different language
> settings, usernames, ...).
> __Solution: Both, the CMS and the 3rdPA, need to call an update/delete
> function when updating/deleting user accounts.

I've touched upon the topic of user management in relation to integrating
3rd party apps with TYPO3 through extensions before. I think the real
problem lies in the design of the user management code in TYPO3. It's badly
factored, and thus it is hard to override. If it wasn't, you could simply
overload core functions such as add_user(), edit_user(), etc. through a core
extension (or even more logical from an OO point of view, overload a User
object, but we've already somewhat painfully touched that issue in a
different post). If you could override factored functionality like that,
would you really need an event system? You'd override it like you would
override any behaviour, and synchronize these methods with the user
management logic that is present in the third party application. But yes,
sooner or later you will have to modify the third party application.
Sometimes it's simple, sometimes it's not. The way links work, for example.
They need to be TYPO3 in order to not fly out of the TYPO3 framework.
Furthermore, you want to eliminate user subscription via the third party
app, too. I guess every third party application raises different issues, but
user management is a major one, and I believe the problem can be minimized
if the TYPO3 code for it would be refactored heavily. But again, I've
touched upon that before a few times already, and I don't see that kinda
changes happen anytime soon. Usually adding is easier than changing. But a
lot of adding makes changing even harder. See what I mean..