Question

I have been trying to figure out a way to get variable expansion to return a list in table form of all members (preferably users, but users and groups would do) of a given group. The closest idea I've had is to use a FormattedSearch to extract the

Set GROUP = ...

line from the group topic, and then use regexps to extract the comma-separated group members from that, but it doesn't look like this type of extraction is supported.

Another approach might have been to use = to extract the =GROUP variable from the group topic, but == only lets you extract TWikiPreferences. So how do I do it?

• TWiki version: 20020803beta
• Web server: Apache 1.3.23
• Server OS: RedHat Advanced Server 2.1
• Web browser: Mozilla 1.1 alpha
• Client OS: Linux 2.4.9

-- AdamSpiers - 14 Oct 2002

Answer

You currently cannot get the expanded list of users in case the group includes other groups. However, you can get the list. Example:

%INCLUDE{ "%MAINWEB%.TWikiAdminGroup" pattern=".*\s\*\sSet\sGROUP\s*=\s*([^\n\r]*).*" }%

returns this:

Main.HideyoImazu, Main.PeterThoeny, Main.SopanShewale, Main.VickiBrown

You could do the same with a formatted search and a regular expression, but this is slower.

-- PeterThoeny - 14 Oct 2002

Thanks ... but I actually wanted the list in table form, one user/group per row. Then the AssignedTo column of my primitive bug tracker could have its values restricted to members of a particular group, which is exactly what I need. Is that possible?

-- AdamSpiers - 15 Oct 2002

You are asking for some kind of processing of a comma delimited list into another format like a table. This is currently not possible unless you write a Plugin that does this for you.

<brainstorming>
A ConvertListPlugin would convert:
%CONVERTLIST{ "A, B, C" into="|$item|" separator="$n" }%
into:

Or, you simply could define a preference variable containing your group in table format. But that means you would need to maintain the group in two places.

-- PeterThoeny - 15 Oct 2002

I'm in exactly the same spot - would like to have group members available for selection in an 'assign to' field in the Bugs Contrib Twiki application. Was wondering whether in the passing 5 years anything changed regarding this issue?

-- EyalTeutsch - 01 Oct 2007

Yes, put a %SEARCH{}% in the assigned to field. Make sure to generate a comma-space separated list using format="$web.$topic" separator=", " parameters.

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Dec 2007