[Chandler-dev] Re: [Design] Questions about name that appears in detail view bi-line

[Morgen Sagen]

On Mar 2, 2007, at 3:33 PM, Morgen Sagen wrote:
> For lastModifiedBy, the sharing layer (specifically sharing/ 
> translator.py) is assuming that it is a bi-ref to an EmailAddress  
> item.  The current implementation serializes the  
> EmailAddress.emailAddress string when sending an item; when  
> receiving an item, it takes the incoming email address string,  
> finds the corresponding EmailAddress item (or creates it if needed)  
> and assigns that to the item's lastModifiedBy attribute.
>
> If we want this to sometimes be an email address and sometimes be a  
> sharing account, we'll need some way to distinguish this when  
> deserializing.  Presumably the existence of an @ sign in the string  
> means it's an email address, otherwise it's a sharing account.  But  
> come to think of it, that doesn't work either:  say the user has no  
> sharing account set up (because they are subscribed only via  
> ticket) -- and an incoming item's lastModifiedBy record is a non- 
> email address string.  Under the hood, what do we assign to the  
> item's lastModifiedBy?  We don't want to create a sharing account  
> locally for the other person, and we don't have an email address  
> for them.
>
> I'm hoping we can just consistently use an email address until we  
> have a Contacts implementation.

Alternatively, we could simply not model lastModifiedBy with a bi-ref  
to an item, but instead simply make it a string attribute.  That way,  
it doesn't really matter what it is.  Could be an email address, a  
first/last name, a userid, etc.