Updated! - UNID Bot version 0.2.0

[alterecco]

I'd be happy to host it if needs be. Seeing as I work for a hosting company I have plenty of available webspace and such... MySQL would not be a problem to get set up, and with Periculis go ahead I could hack the script to use it.

That said, I would also be in favour of hosting on neurohack if possible.

[Aury]

doesn't really where it's hosted, I just want something nice and simple to read.
like a text file that goes;
Username
UNID
Username
UNID
Username
UNID
Username
UNID
etc...

[schilcote]

If I were writing it, I'd use Username:Unid. I'd only have to readline once, and for some reason I get a big thrill out of parsing strings. It's just so awesome.

[Aury]

I'd rather not waste time parsing strings... also, what if someone puts in really weird characters for their name? that can't put in carriage returns, so having 2 lines is safest imo

[Sponge]

I'd rather not waste time parsing strings... also, what if someone puts in really weird characters for their name?

The script should have some rudimentary validation scheme to weed these out. A little bit of Regex never killed anyone . Ultimately, it's totally up to whoever's doing the coding. I'd take the string parsing method, but that's just me. Also, this is a great idea for a script and will be quite handy to new players. Good job, Periculi.

[Aury]

I always make my files clean and easy to read with minimal amounts of parsing (unless its actually meant for a human to go read it, in which case I might invest in making it a bit tidier if its too large and complex).

[Aury]

Well, if a very specific recognition sequence were used, I could look for the last occurrence of it in the line...
like: <username>:0x<UNID> with the :0x being that sequence...

[schilcote]

I think it'd be a heck of a lot easier to just write a little thingy that accepts requests to add UNIDs from a text file than to do a big ol' MySQL database thingy. I don't completely know what MySQL is.

[Aury]

I think it would be a waste of a MySQL database
I agree a text database would be much nicer and simpler. Simple is best.

[Periculi]

My text flat file uses '/' and '<' characters to separate entries:

<Periculi/0xDDDD
<Someguy/0xDDDC

or more accurately as a big fat string <Periculi/0xDDDD<Someguy/0xDDDC

Weeding out the weird characters is done with a combination of filter_var() commands in php5. Probably need to add more validation, but that's really a non-issue as I have a whole library of php filter options to use.

The hexadecimal demonstrates a filter_var($int, FILTER_VALIDATE_INT) that allows me to also use flags for hexadecimal only, and defined min and max range. Too easy.

My thoughts on where to host it are to use a place where there are already Transcendence Users being logged in and therefore validation - Xelerus, Wiki, Forums would all be a great spot to implement the UNID tool because they already filter out randoms and have user databases to qualify users.

If we did use one of the above, a filter for the user name wouldn't be needed because the user name would be provided by the application - which presumably already has sufficient validation.

As far as Wolfy and Schilcote's ideas go, I still don't see a real need. I felt that automating the UNID registration was an excellent step up, and am willing to go this much further with it: Helping get it set up in a more permanent location. Any further coding on the tool by me will be based on 'As I am available' and "If I really feel like it" beyond setting it up somewhere and linking into an existing user database.

[Aury]

Oh, it wasn't stuff that YOU needed to do! I was talking about for the people who are actually reading the file (like my TMU or whatever schilcote is doing)

[Periculi]

Feel free to try to access the file, and you may find that you do need me after all.

[schilcote]

We can always get our own file.

Anyway, your file is formatted unnecessarily. I take enough crap from IRC, I don't need another crappy data format to deal with.