Item12809: Add smart groups

I hate to say this but... there are two very useful "smart" groups in TWiki 6

• AllAuthUsersGroup All authenticated users.
• AllUsersGroup All users including unauthenticated users.

I would love to see something like this in Foswiki.

I don't care what you call them. Personally, I think the "All" is redundant.

We've already got the AUTHUSER variable, so an AuthUsersGroup would go well with that.

AllUsers includes WikiGuest, I presume. I'm not as sure of the use case for this one.

I have a use case for AuthUsersGroup now. I have been doing consulting with three companies that each post a semi-public wiki. They need the ability to show or hide information, e.g. on the left bar, based on whether the viewer is logged in or not. The ability to use

     * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = AuthUsersGroup

would be much simpler and easier to explain to the average content author than the need to write some sort of

%IF{"context authenticated" ...

code.

-- VickiBrown - 19 Mar 2014

I agree that these special groups are more intuitive that the alternative, but you don't need to use context authenticated. Setting a DENYTOPICVIEW for WikiGuest is the equivalent for allowing Authenticated. The only time the WikiGuest identity is used is when a user is not authenticated.

Allowing everyone including guest is done by setting DENYTOPICVIEW = an empty string. Deny nobody is equivalent to allow everybody.

These behaviours are documented in the AccessControl topic. So I believe that both of your use cases are covered by existing options.

-- GeorgeClark - 20 Mar 2014

Sorry, George, you misunderstood. I'm not asking for a how to; I understand the ACLs quite well. I'm asking for a variable to be added to Foswiki.

If you don't like my use case, think of another one.

-- VickiBrown - 20 Mar 2014

Vicki, could you please create a feature proposal and elaborate in more detail the use case that ultimately requires the new IDs? Once the proposal had some peer review we can use this task item to implement it.

-- MichaelDaum - 20 Mar 2014

Feature proposal: Development/SmartGroups

-- VickiBrown - 30 Mar 2014

Note that TWIki has changed the meaning of what setting DENYTOPICVIEW = an empty string does.

Depending how much cross-wiki compatibility you want, this could be important. (As someone who runs both TWiki and Foswiki in parallel on the same data trees, and hopes to consult for companies running either, I'm a huge fan of cross-wiki compatibility.)

http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiReleaseNotes06x00#Spec_Change_for_Empty_DENYTOPICV

-- VickiBrown - 30 Mar 2014

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