XF 2.2 Custom Field - User Lookup

[Mr_Bob]

Hi everyone. I’m working on a new private community for family and extended family. I’d like to have a custom user field that operates as a user lookup. So that is to say the validation requires that a valid forum user(s) is/are selected and I’d like to use Xenforo’s native username lookup function when filling out the field. Is there a way to do this in the default custom profile field tool? Thanks!

 

[Paul B]

That would require custom development.

 

[Mr_Bob]

Perfect - thanks, Brogan!

 

[Paul B]

What's the purpose of the custom user field?

Is it for registration validation?

 

[Mr_Bob]

We’ll primarily use it as a way to connect family members together. Think kind of like what Facebook does listing relationships with other members (married to, son/daughter, sister/brother, etc). For this project we’re looking at a community of about 150 people, so we wanted a quick way to connect users to their relationships (Aunt Anne may have no idea who Sally Jones is, but she can see it’s her niece‘s sister-in-law in a click).

 

[Paul B]

You could do something with custom user fields but it wouldn't be automated and it would be a bit clunky - the members would have to manually enter the data themselves.

You could have a selection of fields such as:

• Mother
• Father
• Daughter 1
• Daughter 2
• Son 1
• Sibling 1
• ... and so on

Then each member would populate the relevant fields with the member ID/name.

Alternatively, you could create a PHP callback (going back to the custom dev).