EE Member Sync

EE Member Sync is a Rails plugin to sync users from ExpressionEngine to a model in Rails. The plugin consists of:

• a controller method to extract the EE session ID from the cookie and load the session data from the EE sessions table
• a model class method and an instance method to sync a specific member ID
• a model instance method to update the member's group

This plugin is tested against EE 1.6.5.

Usage

Include the EEMemberSync::Model module in your model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  include EEMemberSync::Model
end

Include the EEMemberSync::Controller module in your controller:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include EEMemberSync::Controller
end

Generate a new migration with the required fields:

class CreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :users do |t|
      t.integer :ee_id
      t.integer :ee_group_id
      t.string  :ee_group_name
      t.string  :ee_username
      t.string  :ee_screen_name
      t.string  :ee_email

      t.timestamps
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :users
  end
end

Controller Methods

class UsersController < ActionController::Base
  def some_action
    # uses the value in cookies["exp_sessionid"] to find the session
    # assigns the EE session data to session[:ee_session]
    fetch_ee_session  
  end

  def another_action
    # uses the supplied value to find the session
    fetch_ee_session(params[:sessid])  
  end
end

Model Methods

# EE member 1 has never synced before

# create a new record in the users table with the member's data
@user = User.sync_with_ee(1) 

puts @user.ee_screen_name  # => "Yay"

# update the member's group
# @user will be reloaded automatically
@user.update_ee_group("Contributors")

# ... member updates their screen_name through EE

# sync again, changes will be pulled in and saved
# @user will be reloaded automatically
@user.sync_with_ee
puts @user.ee_screen_name # => "Hooray"

Testing

ExpressionEngine is MySQL-only, so testing requires a valid MySQL config. Add your config info to test/rails_root/config/database.yml.

TODO

• add a generator for the migration
• validations for model attributes?
• update the EE cookie so it doesn't expire if the user is only in the Rails app
• validate the user's IP/UA against the IP/UA in the EE session

Copyright (c) 2009 Chris Jones, released under the MIT license