Site Registration with DynamicData

Thanks to Chris from over at CrispCreations.co.uk, I found out that site registration was broken. Thanks to having resolved the exact same issue on a client site in development, it was a quick matter to resolve the problem.

So that everyone has a fair chance to put their two cents in on Ivory Tower, I've fixed registration. Keep reading to hear the details...

The first thing that I had to resolve was the Auth ID, which was being generated by the Registration module without declaring a specific module to get it for, assuming that it would always be localled called by the Registration module itself.

However, I did a fancy registration page using Xarpages, and called the Registration form in using xarModFunc, directly. This resulted in the Auth ID being generated for Xarpages, not Registration. To fix this, I copied the registration form template and re-specified the Auth ID by getting it specifically for the Registration module.

That fixed the "you-clicked-the-back-button" error, but still left us with DynamicData errors (you can tell, because they don't give you much to go on). First, I updated dynamicdata_adminapi_updatehook and turned $verbose on so that I could see more descriptive error messages.

This pointed to the fact that I had several DynamicData fields assigned to Roles for User Data, and some of the fields did not have an empty value allowed.

I could have simply shown the DynamicData user fields on the Registration form, but I don't like to encumber my visitors like that.

I could have specified default values to use for each, but most of the fields that had options did not include one for an empty value and no other values were suggestive of becoming defaults.

The fix, when all was said and done, involved adding an empty value option for each User Data field in DynamicData. Now you can choose not to divulge your Gender and you can specify that you are "never" available (instead of simply not selecting any options).

End result? Registration works.

Thanks again, Chris, for pointing out the problem for me! Since you only have to register once, it is easy for developers to overlook this first crucial feature after site development has really gotten underway. Yeah, I know, excuses excuses...