The User Profile Class

/*
**	(c) COPYRIGHT MIT 1995.
**	Please first read the full copyright statement in the file COPYRIGH.
*/

The User profile class manages what we know about a user on this host. This can for example be the FQDN of the host, the user's email address, the time zone, the news server etc. Note that this information does not correspond to the actual information for the host but instead represents "the information that the user wants to show the world". The user may use an arbitrary email address to be used in a HTTP request, for example. The application may assign a context to each use which gives the application to extend the use of this class.

This module is implemented by HTUser.c, and it is a part of the W3C Sample Code Library.

#ifndef HTUSER_H
#define HTUSER_H

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" { 
#endif 

typedef struct _HTUserProfile HTUserProfile;

Creation and Deletion Methods

The application may create any number of user profile objects. By default the Library creates a generic user which is the default value used to initialize a Request object. This can be replaced by other user profiles at any point in time.

Create a User Profile

extern HTUserProfile * HTUserProfile_new (const char * name, void * context);

Localize a User Profile

Localize a user profile by filling in all the information that we can figure out automatically, for example the email address, news server etc.

extern BOOL HTUserProfile_localize (HTUserProfile * up);

Delete a User Profile

extern BOOL HTUserProfile_delete (HTUserProfile * up);

User Profile Class Methods

Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

The FQDN is a fully qualified domain name in that it contains both a local host name and the domain name. It turns out that this is in fact very difficult to obtain a FQDN on a variety of platforms.

extern char * HTUserProfile_fqdn (HTUserProfile * up);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setFqdn (HTUserProfile * up, const char * fqdn);

User Email Address

This is the email address that the user wants to send out for example as a "password" when using anonymous FTP access and as a "From" field in a HTTP request.

extern char * HTUserProfile_email (HTUserProfile * up);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setEmail (HTUserProfile * up, const char * email);

News Server

Control the news server that this user wishes to use

extern char * HTUserProfile_news (HTUserProfile * host);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setNews (HTUserProfile * host, const char * news);

Location of Temporary Files

Control the location for temporary files for this profile. The format must be in URL format which is different from local file syntax as URL syntaz always uses '/' as delimiters and also encoding of special characters. See the documentation on URLs for more information about URL syntax.

extern char * HTUserProfile_tmp (HTUserProfile * host);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setTmp (HTUserProfile * host, const char * tmp);

Local Time Zone (in seconds)

Another widely used piece information that is very hard toobtain is the local time zone. As we often must convert to and from GMT (Universal Time) we must have the correct time zone. If we for some reason guesses wrong then the user must change it manually.

extern time_t HTUserProfile_timezone (HTUserProfile * up);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setTimezone (HTUserProfile * up, time_t timezone);

User Profile Context

The applicatoin may have additional information that it wishes to assign to a user profile. It can do this using the user context which is handled as follows:

extern void * HTUserProfile_context (HTUserProfile * up);
extern BOOL HTUserProfile_setContext (HTUserProfile * up, void * context);

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

#endif /* HTUser_H */