Hi Ray,

Here are some thoughts if you let the user select his school during registration:

• The registration form is implemented by the "account/forms/register" view.  You would add your new UI elements to views/default/account/forms/register.php.
• You need some way to carry the group selected through the registration process.
  
• Note that a new user is disabled until validated; I assume that you are using the uservalidationbyemail plugin.
  
• It may be confusing to the user that there's an validation e-mail and then an invite to join a group that he has already selected during registration.
• You would need to disable the various group management actions (e.g. add to group).

I think you may have a smoother process if you let the user select his school during validation instead.  Here's what I would try:

• Let the group for a new user be specified by say the "school_group" parameter.
• Register a plugin hook for the "email/confirm" action.  If "school_group" is missing, redirect the user to a page where he can select his school.  The email confirmation request is then resubmitted with school_group.  (We can talk about how to do a plugin hook for action if you are not familiar with it.)
• If school_group is present, than upon successful validation, the plugin hook would cause the new user to be added to the group (basically a ElggGroup::join() call).

-- Patrick

WOW...i just wrote a HUGE paragraph and forgot to click submit...walked away, came back an hour later, clicked submit and the error box pops up sayin the page expired and then it wouldn't let me get my comment back...UGH!

anyways, so the gist is this...on the site now i have a field in registration where they can chose their school from a drop down menu but it's only a tag field...can i harness that power somehow and maybe do something like:

after email confirmation

get infofield_school

find the group with the same name(i'd manually create the schools(i.e. groups) in the database that I want)

Autoinvite/autoaccept

What cha think?

Thanks!

-Ray-

The "email/confirm" action triggers an 'enable' event when the confirmation is verified, so it is simpler than I thought.  I don't know how you pass 'infofield_school' around, but something like the following would work:

function blah_email_confirm_hook() {
  register_elgg_event_handler('enable', 'user', 'blah_user_enabled');
  return true;
}

function blah_user_enabled($event, $type, $user) {
  // just some sanity checks
  //
  if ($event != 'enable' || $type != 'user' || !($user instanceof ElggUser))
    return true;

  // TODO: where does school group GUID come from?  Is it a
  // parameter encoded in the e-mail confirmation URL?
  //
  $grp_guid = get_input('infofield_school');
  $usr_guid = $user->guid;

  // add user to group
  // TODO: make sure $grp_guid is a valid school group
  //
  if (!is_group_member($grp_guid, $usr_guid)) {
    if (!join_group($grp_guid, $usr_guid)) {
      // TODO: error handling
    }
  }

  return true;
}

// register hook for email/confirm, e.g. in a plugin's start.php
//
register_plugin_hook('action', 'email/confirm', 'blah_email_confirm_hook');