Hold username while user completes registration?

Pikachu2000

I'm trying to come up with some ideas on how to accomplish this. I need to create a user registration that will span multiple forms. On the first, the user enters the desired username and a DB query is executed to see if the desired username is available.

If the username is available, I want to make sure it stays available while the user completes the registration process. My question is: is there a "best way" to accomplish that?

The thoughts I've had are:

Have the user data span multiple DB tables, inserting the username and PW immediately after checking availability. The problem I see with that is if the user doesn't complete the process, an orphaned record ends up in the table, and the username is now tied up and unavailable. If the user does complete the process, the user data is spread across multiple tables.
Somehow use a temporary table to insert the username while the registration process is completed. This would keep the user data in one table, but would require two DB queries to check availability, and would I still need a way to get the record out of there if the user doesn't complete the registration.
Don't bother. Let the user continue through the process and if the username is registered by someone else in the meantime, generate an error, and redisplay the input field. (Probably not the best option for the user, but certainly the easiest for me.)

Anyone have any thoughts? Am I overcomplicating this? (I tend to do that occasionally.) 🙂

dalecosp

Well, you could obviously hold it in $_SESSION, but that doesn't avoid the possibility of duplication if someone else is attempting to register the name simultaneously. Is this PHP5? what about storing in a stream, like php://memory, or php://temp?

Pikachu2000

dalecosp;10941846 wrote:
Well, you could obviously hold it in $_SESSION, but that doesn't avoid the possibility of duplication if someone else is attempting to register the name simultaneously. Is this PHP5? what about storing in a stream, like php://memory, or php://temp?

Yes, it's php 5. I've never used stream, but I'll have a look at it when I'm able to. If it will do what I need it to, it may just make this a lot easier. Thanks for pointing it out!

djjjozsi

Why don't you insert the email + username and the selected password in the users table,
and send an activation email to continue the registration?
Then you can filter the robots and keep your table up-to-date.
A CRON function will delete the unfinished registrations in one day
+ the user won't lose the inputted data, because session usually has limitations in time.

halojoy

djjjozsi;10941851 wrote:
Why don't you insert the email + username and the selected password in the users table,
and send an activation email to continue the registration?
Then you can filter the robots and keep your table up-to-date.

This is also how I do it.

When a user submits registration, I check Username and Email is Available.
To make sure no duplicates, I also have declared Username and Email field UNIQUE
When everything is submitted I add the new user to USERS table.
I have a User STATUS field, and insert 'waiting' to indicate registration is not confirmed.
When new user submits his confirmation link, I change STATUS: 'active'

These are my fields in TABLE Users.
'code' is used in two ways:
1. The code in confimation of registration. In the activation-link
2. Secret code, value for RememberMe COOKIE
timejoin is the Unix Timestamp, php-function time();

$sql = "CREATE TABLE users (
id     MEDIUMINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
name   VARCHAR(32) UNIQUE,
pass   VARCHAR(40),
email  VARCHAR(48) UNIQUE,
userlevel  TINYINT,
timejoin  INT,
code   VARCHAR(40),
status VARCHAR(20)
)";

Pikachu2000

djjjozsi and halojoy,

I can see where that would work, but what I'm trying to avoid is making the user stop the registration process, confirm an email, then continue the process. I'd strongly prefer they were able to enter all required information before having to confirm the email. This way, there is continuity in the process and (I believe) a higher completion percentage.

Although the process shouldn't take the average user more than 2-3 minutes, I'd like to make it flow as smoothly as possible, get all the data inserted into the DB, then send the confirmation email to the user. Once that is all done, if the user doesn't confirm within a specified time, I can run a cron job to delete the record, or send out a reminder.

I hope I'm making sense, and not making a mountain out of a molehill . . .

djjjozsi

you can save the session variable in the users table to be able to track which user is trying to register for your service.

And you then just update that table where you enter the other questions according to the database normalization rules.

On a success confirmation status field would be activated.

Pikachu2000

djjjozsi;10941887 wrote:
you can save the session variable in the users table to be able to track which user is trying to register for your service.

And you then just update that table where you enter the other questions according to the database normalization rules.

On a success confirmation status field would be activated.

Now there's a good idea. Then I could run a cron job to send a reminder or or delete the record based on a datetime field if a confirmation flag is unset.

Thanks a bunch; since I'm not a professional programmer, it would have taken me a lot of trial and error to come up with that!