New username isn't checked for spaces when added to LDAP

[Matt Di Giuseppe]

Mahara version: 16.10.3

When adding a new user, if you select an institution/authentication method with LDAP, the usersame is not being checked for leading/trailing spaces, and it isn't trimmed before being added to the database. Users can be created with usernames like " newuser ".

If you try to do this with a non LDAP authentication method, it thows an error and will not continue (although the error message does not highlight the username field as the source of the error in this case).

I've fixed it locally with trim() around the username value before it's put into the databse.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for this report. If you'd like to submit your solution for Mahara core, we'd love to see it. You can find information on how to set up your connection to our code review system at https://wiki.mahara.org/wiki/Developer_Area/Contributing_Code

Or since it's your first fix for Mahara, if you want to submit it here to Launchpad as a patch file, we can push it into our review system.

Cheers
Kristina

[Kevin Dibble (digitalskill)]

Really not sure which is the best solution.
1.) Force LDAP not to have spaces - which would break current installs.
2.) Add a special character in the username feature (Like Moodle) which existing users of Mahara will need to know before updating.
or
3.) leave (not really broken - more of a data checking/ entry issue?)

LDAP usernames can contain spaces.
Putting in a trim feature would then break all existing users on Mahara where their LDAP has been set up to allow spaces. So - allowing spaces in LDAP username looks to be allowed for this very reason.

Moodle put in this solution:
$CFG->extendedusernamechars = true
To allow special characters in usernames (Which old LDAPS out there use).
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=279500

As Mahara allows special characters once you choose LDAP - it already resolves a Moodle issue.