[Catalyst] Squatting::On::Catalyst

[Bruce Keeler]

Daniel McBrearty wrote:
> The usual way to make things like this work is by having a
> standardised api. In the case of membership for a website, it might
> look something like:
>
> get_unique_user_id # of logged in user
> get_username_for_id( id )
>
> Then if a forum has tables such as:
>
> thread -> references username
> post -> ditto
>
> and maybe methods like
>
> send_pm( user )
> find_posts( user )
>
> if you are prepared to sacrifice the actual foreign key relationship,
> not that big a thing IMHO, you can do it all through the API. The
> person that writes the forum code/schema can actually have two install
> options - with and without the user table.
>
> Cat almost has this in place at present.
>
>   
Seems to me the easiest way would be to have the forum module have it's 
own user table, keyed by the same user id as the core user table.  Then 
it can store whatever it wants in there, like signatures, posting 
preferences or whatever.  The core user table/object could have a few 
well-known attributes like real name, email address and so on, but not 
much else.