Add email to a group and create it if it not exists

@Sinnbeck Well I have thought about this solution.

I create an add method in the GroupController to add the user to the owner group, but if the user doesn't exist, I have to create it => where ? in the add method ? it's just not the right place because there is already a method to create a new user.

So my question is : if I want a clean code with not the same code at different places, how can I call the creation of the user from the add method ?

@Sinnbeck You would create an action ? What is the real difference between actions and controllers ? I think there is no difference, it's just another way to organize the code (I had read this in some documentation).

@vincent15000 what's the difference between a group and a owner group?

@vincent15000 yeah totally. But an action can be tested by itself and can be reused. Say you later want to add a command that does the same. You just reuse the action

@Sinnbeck This is the database tables.

users : id, name
groups : id, name, user_id
user_group : user_id, group_id

Each user has automatically his own group and can invite some other users to work with him by adding them his own group.

But he can also be added to the group of other users.

@vincent15000 so the code is 3 steps?

1. Find user by email
2. Check if group id is in group pivot table
3. If not add it

@Sinnbeck Plus one more step : check if the email exists in the database. That is to allow a boss to add collaborators in his group even if the collaborators don't have any account on the app (in this case the app creates the needed accounts and send an email with a temporary password to the collaborators).

And this is especially this step which disturbs me.

@vincent15000 ah ok I assumed they had to exist already. So users don't require anything but a name? Here I would have an action to handle this. CreateOrFirstUserByEmail::class

@Sinnbeck Users require a name, an email and a password. After being created by the app, the users receive an email and then they can connect to work with the host (group owner).

@vincent15000 well sounds like their name will be undefined. Otherwise you need to add a flow. Say a validation if the user exists. If not you show a validation error with an action button that takes them to the create user page with the email pre filled

@Sinnbeck And if I want to create it without the creation form ? Only with the email (the name will be the email too, and the password will be generated).

@Sinnbeck Oh you gave me an idea ... the best way is perhaps to check if the user exists or not. If he doesn't exist, he will receive an email which invite him to create an account and he will be automatically attached to the owner group once his account created.

@vincent15000 yeah you can easily just set the name to some dummy text until they click a link to a form where they can change it. Maybe just an empty string

@Sinnbeck But the initial purpose was to create the non existing user accounts without having to invite them to create themselves an account. It's for internal society when a boss add collaborators to the app.

@vincent15000 well someone needs to add a name I assume? You don't want it to be the boss, but not the user either? Not quite sure what you mean then?

@Sinnbeck While creating automatically a user just with his email address, the name will automatically set with the email value and the password will be generated with a random string.

@vincent15000 yeah I get that. But who do you want to correct the name afterwards?

3 ideas

1. After creation, boss is sent to the user profile to fix it
2. User gets an invite to change name
3. User just gets asked to change it on first login

@Sinnbeck Yes that's all right for me.

How can I manage the creation of the non existing users ? I mean I'd like to have a unique place where the creation of the user is coded, for me it's Fortify. I could write another code to create a new user, but this code already exists in Fortify.

Is it possible to call the Fortify create method from another controller ? Is it a good practice to do so ?

@vincent15000 if there is an action, then you can reuse that. If it's a controller, extract it to somewhere and reuse it. It can also just me a method on the user model

@Sinnbeck Ok so I can reuse the Fortify create method.

@vincent15000 as long as it does not validate (I don't remember the code even though I use it myself)

@Sinnbeck It validates, but I can manually add some more properties to the request before calling the method.

@vincent15000 What class is it? It sounds a bit like you are trying to work around the issue instead of making a proper implementation :)

@Sinnbeck I exactly want to make a proper implementation. That's why I ask ;).

@vincent15000 found the file https://github.com/laravel/fortify/blob/1.x/stubs/CreateNewUser.php

It could work. But personally I would make a new one that does firsrOrCreate() instead https://laravel.com/docs/9.x/eloquent#retrieving-or-creating-models

@Sinnbeck But if you create a new one, you will have two codes for the same action (create a new user) in your app. Why is it a good idea ?

@vincent15000 they don't do the same? One validates that the data from the frontend is correct and unique and creates a user. The other takes very specific data and either find or creates a new user.