XF 1.2 Make username not unique?

[Mike Edge]

How can I make the username not unique and make logging in strictly via e-mail address?

 

[Chris D]

Yikes...

I would have thought that's a pretty extensive change...

But one thing you could try in a completely isolated test board is removing the unique index on the username field with this query:

ALTER TABLE `xf_user` 
DROP INDEX `username`

I haven't even begun to think about the problems this could cause, though, so please do proceed with caution.

There's quite a few cases, I think, where XenForo assumes the username is unique so I think this could require some pretty extensive development. I know why you want to do it though... Just a big task, I think.

 

[Mike Edge]

Great thanks, I'll let you know how it goes and if I hit any bumps.

 

[Mike]

Yeah, bad idea. Think about conversations, user searches, tagging, find by user, etc. Everything user facing in XF is geared around usernames.

 

[Mike Edge]

@Mike When I tag you, isn't it just like profile? Displays "Mike" but it alerts Mike.3?

 

[Mike]

You just tagged "Mike" -- the system found the ID from the name. What if there are 2 Mikes?

 

[Mike Edge]

Yikes...

I would have thought that's a pretty extensive change...

But one thing you could try in a completely isolated test board is removing the unique index on the username field with this query:

ALTER TABLE `xf_user`
DROP INDEX `username`

I haven't even begun to think about the problems this could cause, though, so please do proceed with caution.

There's quite a few cases, I think, where XenForo assumes the username is unique so I think this could require some pretty extensive development. I know why you want to do it though... Just a big task, I think.

Revisiting this as I finally got around to this project idea again.. Trying to create a second user with same username it says User names must be unique. The specified user name is already in use. I did the alter you gave me to drop the index.

 

[Mike Edge]

Woot.. with a few core file edits it works! Registering normal or using FB connect

 

[Mike Edge]

Any sggestions on if I was to tag Test1 how to make both registered appear in the popup to select, not just the lowest user_id one

 

[Chris D]

Frankly, no.

We're still of the opinion that this is a pretty bad idea from a technical point of view. And this issue you're experiencing now is just one of the problems you will face.

The system is designed to expect that usernames are unique. If you remove that constraint then you're going to find numerous things that stop working as expected.