User Registration

Perhaps the first component that comes to mind on a community site is the registration of new users. VCE is distributed with built-in features to allow template developers to write the user registration feature in minimal effort.

The struts configuration for the user registration action can be as follows:

<form-bean name="userProfileForm" type="com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.forms.UserProfileForm" />

<action path="/user/profile/add"
        name="userProfileForm"
        scope="request"
        parameter="userProfile"
        type="com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.save.SaveUserProfile">
  <forward name="success" path="/?view=signupSuccess" redirect="true"/>
  <forward name="error" path="/index.jsp?view=signup" />
</action>

An example template that will allow a new user on the site to register his information can be as follows:

<html:form action="/user/profile/add">
  <html:messages id="messages" message="true">
    <bean:message  name="messages"/><br/>
  </html:messages>

	<html:hidden property="articleType" value="${articleType.name}"/>
	<html:hidden property="homeSectionId" value="${homeSectionId}"/>
	<html:hidden property="state" value="${state}"/>
	<html:hidden property="image" value=""/>
	<html:hidden property="articleId"/>

  <html:hidden property="errorUrl" value="/signup.jsp" />

  Username: <html:text property="field(username)" /><br/>
  Email: <html:text property="field(emailaddress)" /><br/>
  First name: <html:text property="field(firstname)" /><br/>
  Family name: <html:text property="field(surname)" /><br/>
  Telephone: <html:text property="field(telephone)" /><br/>
  <html:submit value="Register"/>
</html:form>

On some community sites, you may be required to display the password of the user after registration. Set redirect="false" in action forwoard in struts configuration file to show the password in the forwarded page. This can be easily achieved through the following JSP template:

<form-bean name="userProfileForm" type="com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.forms.UserProfileForm" />

<action path="/user/profile/add"
        name="userProfileForm"
        scope="request"
        parameter="userProfile"
        type="com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.save.SaveUserProfile">
  <forward name="success" path="/?view=signupSuccess" redirect="false"/>
  <forward name="error" path="/index.jsp?view=signup" />
</action>

<logic:present name="userProfileForm">
	<bean:define id="password" name="userProfileForm" property="password" type="String"/>
  Password: ${password}<br/>
</logic:present>

The com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.forms.UserProfileForm class is a subclass of the com.ndc.usercontent.struts.actions.forms.ArticleForm. For details on form properties of ArticleForm, please have a look at: Creating Articles. Apart from the article-form properties, the user-form adds the following properties: