Textpattern Support Forum

the_ghost wrote:

Unknown author of blog entries

Ah, they’re written by Sencer but his user account has been removed from the Users table so his name’s not always showing up on the public side.

It’s an interesting TXP issue: for performance reasons, any time an author name is requested, it is cached so any future requests on that page for the same author are returned without having to go to the database. A few things are fouling this up:

1. His account’s missing and the get_author_name() function tries to grab the author RealName from the database. Whether this attempt succeeds or not, the RealName (empty because he doesn’t exist and his assets haven’t been reassigned for whatever reason) is set to the cached user info for next time. For this first attempt, however, the user’s name is returned instead (as expected)
2. The 2nd time an article by Sencer is requested, it checks the cache, sees that there’s already an entry there (even though it’s empty) and returns nothing
3. But, Stef, you might cry. There are two articles by Sencer showing up on that page and then every other article he wrote is authorless. Yeah, ummm, the reason for that is the first article is written by sencer, and the 2nd (probably written in TXP 4.0.6 or earlier before the user names were sanitized) is written by Sencer (capital S). So there are two entries in the cache — one for each spelling of his name

This combination of subtleties could be considered a bugette in TXP, not sure. Thanks for spotting it.

Last edited by Bloke (2009-12-17 09:27:27)

Hi Stuart,

No need for a plugin, you can do the re-assignments directly on Content -> Articles tab.

maniqui wrote:

No need for a plugin, you can do the re-assignments directly on Content -> Articles tab.

Off topic and tangent: Good point to note, and probably more useful in the case of mass transfer.

That said, the plugin added the ability to the write page of each article. The plugin seems to be broke in 4.2.0, and I personally miss having the option on the write page.

thebombsite wrote:

if we set up a new sencer account then re-assigned the articles??

Yeah, I think when the accounts were copied over to the new domain, his was missed off so the reassignment never took place. I wonder if TXP could handle this better if a user is missing, or is it caveat utilitor?

But anyway, setting up a sencer account and reassigning should work because there are no IDs involved; user names are hard-coded in the textpattern table instead of referenced in a normalized database fashion.

Not sure what would happen with the sencer vs Sencer thing, though. Might be worth either a) sanitizing all the entries in the textpattern table associated with his account so they’re all the same case, or b) create an account, delete it + reassign, create another account with the capitalized letter, delete it + reassign again.

Option (b) might not work if the user names are all lower-cased by default on creation; can’t remember offhand. Either way, a hearty backup is advised 8o)

On a side note, it’s a shame that deleting and reassigning loses the heritage of who created the articles in the first place… but it’s either that or the ol’ dangling articles conundrum *sigh*

Bloke wrote:

Not sure what would happen with the sencer vs Sencer thing, though. Might be worth either a) sanitizing all the entries in the textpattern table associated with his account so they’re all the same case, or b) create an account, delete it + reassign, create another account with the capitalized letter, delete it + reassign again.

You mean we can’t just create a single sencer account and re-assign all of them whether with a “s” or a “S”?

I’m hoping this is as easy as I think it is because there are several “missing” authors.