Create User from JavaScript Client Using CoreService

This post presents some sample code on how to create a Tridion user from JavaScript client using the CoreService. It is based on the setup presented in previous posts and it only makes use of JQuery library.

The logic below is also assigning the newly created user to certain Tridion Groups identified either by TCMURI, Name or Description. This means the code will first call the CoreService to retrieve a list of groups, then identify those we need to assign the user to, then create the UserData object with all group memberships set, and then finally send the request to create the user to CoreService.

The code below is to be inserted into the ServiceProxy class. The entry point is the createUser method, which takes as parameters the user account, user name, and an array of groups to assign the new user. It also takes a success and fail callback functions.

The code makes use of a number of classes defined below, such as UserData, GroupMembershipData, LinkToGroupData, etc.

The logic follows roughly the following algorithm:

• Create user data object and assign user account and user name into it
• For each group in the array groups
• find corresponding Tridion group
• create link to Tridion group using its TCMURI
• push group membership into the user data
• send user data to CoreService to create user

createUser: function (userAccount, userName, groups, success, error) {
    var user = new UserData();
    user.Title = userAccount;
    user.Description = userName;
    user.GroupMemberships = [];

    var i = 0;
    while (groupName = groups[i++]) {
        var group = this.findGroup(groupName);
        if (!group) {
            error("Cannot find group " + groupName);
            return;
        }

        var linkToGroup = new LinkToGroupData();
        linkToGroup.IdRef = group.Id;

        var groupMembership = new GroupMembershipData();
        groupMembership.Group = linkToGroup;

        user.GroupMemberships.push(groupMembership);
    }

    var data = JSON.stringify({ data: user, readBackOptions: {} });
    this._doAjax("Create", data, success, error);
},

loadGroups: function () {
    var groups;
    var filter = new GroupsFilterData();
    this._doAjax("GetSystemWideList", JSON.stringify({ filter: filter }), function (result) {
        if (result.hasOwnProperty("d")) {
            result = result.d;
        }
        groups = result;
    }, null, false);

    return groups;
},

getGroups: function () {
    if (!this._groups) {
        this._groups = this.loadGroups();
    }
    return this._groups;
},

findGroup: function (name) {
    if (name.startsWith("tcm:")) {
        return { Id: "<TcmUri xmlns=\"http://www.sdltridion.com/ContentManager/R6\">" + name + "</TcmUri>" };
    }

    var groups = this.getGroups();
    if (!groups) return null;

    var i = 0;
    while (group = groups[i++]) {
        if (name == group.Description || name == group.Title) {
            return group;
        }
    }

    return null;
}

Method findGroup retrieves a list of Groups from Tridion and matches the group given as parameter into the list of groups by TCMURI, description or title.

Method getGroups retrieves an array of the cached groups it has, otherwise it loads the groups from the server.

Method loadGroups performs the actual retrieving of a list of groups from Tridion, by performing a synchronous (uhhh... bad) AJAX call to CoreService and sending a request to GetSystemWideList method and passing in a GroupsFilterData object.

The data classes used above are defined as follows. They are simply identifying the call with a namespace, so that CoreService knows which method to invoke on the web-service:

GroupsFilterData = function () {
    this.__type = "GroupsFilterData:http://www.sdltridion.com/ContentManager/R6"
}

GroupMembershipData = function () {
    this.__type = "GroupMembershipData:http://www.sdltridion.com/ContentManager/R6"
}

LinkToGroupData = function () {
    this.__type = "LinkToGroupData:http://www.sdltridion.com/ContentManager/R6"
}

UserData = function () {
    this.__type = "UserData:http://www.sdltridion.com/ContentManager/R6"
}

The code calling the createUser method above is the following:

function createSuccess(result) {
    if (!result) {
        alert("no result");
        return;
    }

    if (result.hasOwnProperty("d")) {
        result = result.d;
    }

    alert("Created user with ID: " + result.Id);
}

function createFail(result) {
    if (!result) {
        alert("no result");
        return;
    }

    if (result.hasOwnProperty("d")) {
        result = result.d;
    }

    if (result.hasOwnProperty("responseText")) {
        result = result.responseText;
    }

    alert("Failed: " + result);
}

$(document).ready(function () {
    var userAccount = "ADFS\\mihai";
    var userName = "Mihai Cadariu";
    var groups = ["System Administrator", "tcm:0-3-65568"];

    proxy.createUser(userAccount, userName, groups, createSuccess, createFail);
});