New User is borked

[squidgetx]

users/new: Sorry, the netID that you entered does not exist. You cannot create a user profile without a valid netID.

Quick create shows this message every time as well, even if the netID entered is valid

More curiously, User.search_ldap is also always returning nil. This could be just because I'm not working on a current Yale network though.

[orenyk]

Well, that's not curious, you've got cause and effect reversed :-). /users/new is failing because User.search_ldap is returning nil. I'm going to investigate further.

[squidgetx]

Correct me if I'm wrong but params[:possible_netid] shouldn't be set if accessing the new action from users/new, right?

[orenyk]

Yup, that's the problem. I guess we've never designed the app to be used like this, you've only generally gotten to /users/new if your CAS login wasn't recognized. I'm not sure how critical this is; if we simply get rid of the "New User" button on the /users page, then there should never be a reason to visit the page without a :possible_netid.

[squidgetx]

Eh, I'm pretty sure I remember that page being quite functional a few weeks ago and I think it's important to have a more traditional new -> create action here (where staff/admins can input netID manually) given how the quick create user is acting up.

[orenyk]

That's fair, but then we need to figure out a way to input a possible NetID param, maybe a popup might be easiest?

[squidgetx]

I think the easiest way would just be to adjust the logic in users_controller#new to account for a situation where params[:from_cart] is nil but current user exists

Eg if params[:from_cart].nil? @partial_to_render = 'form' render :new and return or something

[orenyk]

Ok that makes sense, and then we don't even try to pull anything from LDAP. Do we want to have an auto-populate button after the NetID has been entered, though?

[squidgetx]

That would be cool although I'm mostly concerned with just fixing this regression and restoring the old behavior. We can open up a separate issue for that later (also, if we can fix #658 it won't really be as necessary anyway)

[orenyk]

I think #658 is just a slowness issue; I guess there's no need to pull from LDAP in the rare cases where an admin wants to add a user manually, though.