API endpoint: Find a User by Criteria Xenforo 2

Compatible XF 2.x versions

Adds a new endpoint to the Users API controller allowing developers to retrieve a user based on one of three criteria:

user_id
email
username

All parameters are optional and if more than one is specified, the search is performed against each criteria above in the order listed.

For example, if all three parameters are specified and a user_id match is found, that will be returned regardless of the email or username parameters. Similarly, if the user_id is not found, but the email address is, then the user with that email address will be returned regardless of the username specified.

The endpoint can be found at: GET users/find-criteria

This addon was created to help me integrate my forums with my helpdesk system (HelpSpot). When viewing helpdesk requests in HelpSpot, we can perform a "Live lookup" to an external system to retrieve user data to display and/or store in the helpdesk system. In my case, I have it query my forums and return information such as usernames, user status, registration date, and even a link to their user profile on the forums.

Sometimes I have a user_id, sometimes I have an email address and sometimes I have a username - so the system just sends what it has to the XenForo API and then returns the user found. Note that there is an intermediate component that translates the HelpSpot request into a XenForo API call, and then translates the user data return from XenForo into the XML format required by HelpSpot.

Requirements:

You will need an API key with the user:read scope, and if you want to retrieve email address data in the response, the API user will also need Administrator privileges with the Manage users and moderators permission.

Response:

There are two top elements in the response data returned:

user - contains the full user record as per the User data type
urls - a list of URLs for more information about this user:
- api - a link to the API call to retrieve information about this user directly based on the user id (from the core API)
- public - a link to the public XenForo profile for this user
- admin - a link to the admin XenForo profile for this user

Examples:

cURL

PHP:

<?php

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, [
CURLOPT_URL => "http://xenforo21.local/api/users/find-criteria?user_id=2&email=test@example.com&username=test%20user",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "GET",
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => [
"XF-Api-Key: your-api-key",
],
]);

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);

$data = json_decode($response, true);

var_dump($data);

Guzzle

PHP:

    $client = new \GuzzleHttp\Client([
'base_uri' => 'http://xenforo21.local/api/'
]);

$response = $client->request('GET', 'users/find-criteria', [
'query' => [
'user_id' => 2,
'email' => 'test@example.com',
'username' => 'test user'
],
'http_errors' => false,
'headers' => [
'XF-Api-Key' => 'your-api-key'
]
]);

$data = \GuzzleHttp\json_decode($response->getBody()->getContents(), true);

var_dump($data);

Laravel 7

PHP:

    $response = \Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http::withHeaders([
'XF-Api-Key' => 'your-api-key'
])->get('http://xenforo21.local/api/users/find-criteria', [
'user_id' => 2,
'email' => 'test@example.com',
'username' => 'test user'
]);

$data = $response->json();

var_dump($data);

API endpoint: Find a User by Criteria Xenforo 2 1.0.1

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