username contains an invalid character

Donovan · Client Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 691 Location: Ohio

I upgraded my site to 3.1 and now when I try to change somebodies username I get:

Quote:

Sorry, but this username contains an invalid character such as '.

I would really like to be able to change usernames like I used to before.

For example before the patch, the username Copeland I was able to change it to Copeland [45th ID], adding a "clan" tag. Now I can't.

How can I fix this.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4888

There may be valid reasons for not allowing spaces and or characters like the brackets you mentioned. Other than bad HTML, I can't think of any at the moment, but if there are no strong reasons, you could probably modify the user administration function to bypass this "error."

Donovan · Client Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 691 Location: Ohio

kguske wrote:

... modify the user administration function to bypass this "error."

How?

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4888

Are you using the standard Your Account or an enhanced version (I can't remember).

Donovan · Client Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 691 Location: Ohio

I was going thru the forum ACP and manage users at the bottom.

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4888

Sorry, I meant are you using the standard Your Account module that came with your version of PHP-Nuke, or are you using NSN-YA or CNB-YA?

Donovan · Client Joined: Oct 07, 2003 Posts: 691 Location: Ohio

Standard Your Account

evaders99 · Moderator Joined: Apr 30, 2004 Posts: 2856

This specific check is only in the Forums Profile

includes/functions_validate.php

Code:

// Don't allow " and ALT-255 in username.
if (strstr($username, '"') || strstr($username, '"') || strstr($username, chr(160)))
{
return array('error' => true, 'error_msg' => $lang['Username_invalid']);
}

Removing that code will stop this message, however it may make your site more vulnerable to hackers. Do so at your own risk

--

There is a seperate check in the Your_Account module
modules/Your_Account/index.php

Code:

function userCheck($username, $user_email) {

This function is what you'll want to edit probably. Again, it may make your site more vulnerable - do so at your own risk

kguske · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 4888

Another option would be to add a parameter to the validate_username function that determines whether to check for characters (and default the value to true), then modify the call to the function from the admin_users function to be false. That would turn off the check only for admins.