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NOTE: This script does not work with python 2.7. It relies on the xmlrpclib module which changed from 2.6 to 2.7 in a way that broke the script. You need to use python 2.6 for it to work.

Download information

managegroups.py is not included in any official releases. You can download it from our subversion repository.

Download managegroups.py

Available Commands

Running managegroups.py with no arguments provides help on how to use it. It is used by specifying one of the following commands along with parameters specific to each command.

• #addUserGroup - creates a new user group
• #getUserGroupAttributes - gets information about a user group
• #deleteUserGroup - deletes a user group
• #editUserGroup - modifies attributes of a user group
• #getUserGroupMembers - gets members of a user group
• #addUsersToGroup - adds users to a group
• #removeUsersFromGroup - removes users from a group
• #emptyGroupMembership - removes all users currently in a group

Return Status

These are the possible values of the return status:

• 0 - successful execution
• 1 - missing authentication information
• 2 - problem with command line parameters
• 3 - for commands that pass in a filename, problems encountered reading the file
• 4 - no users specified to add to or remove from a group
• 5 - error encountered while performing XML RPC API call

Return Output

The output of managegroups.py will always start with one of:

• SUCCESS: - indicates successful run of the command
• ERROR: - indicates a problem running the command
• WARNING: - indicates a no errors, but possibly unexpected results (i.e. specifying a file when adding users to a group, but the file is empty)
  There is one exception. If you specify a parameter, but omit the argument for it, the option parser used in the script will generate an error. However, in those cases, the return status of the command will always be 2.

Authentication

The script needs to know what userid/password to use and what URL to access. These can either be defined as variables within the script (look at the very top of the file) or specified as parameters on the command line, before specifying which of managegroups's commands to use.

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• -u username - log in to VCL site with this user, must be in username@affiliation form
• -p "vclpass" - password used when logging in to VCL site, use quotes if it contains spaces
• -r vclurl - XMLRPC URL of VCL site (it will end with index.php?mode=xmlrpccall - i.e. https://vcl.ncsu.edu/scheduling/index.php?mode=xmlrpccall)

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addUserGroup addUserGroup

addUserGroup

Use this command to create a new user group.

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: User group sucessfully created

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getUserGroupAttributes getUserGroupAttributes

getUserGroupAttributes

Use this command to get existing information about a user group's attributes (it does not include the current membership of the group).
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: Attributes retreived
followed by:
owner: <user group owner>
managingGroup: <name of managing user group>
initialMaxTime: <max allowed initial reservation time>
totalMaxTime: <total allowed reservation time>
maxExtendTime: <make time allowed per extension>

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deleteUserGroup deleteUserGroup

deleteUserGroup

Use this command to delete an existing user group.
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: User group sucessfully deleted

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editUserGroup editUserGroup

editUserGroup

Use this command to modify attributes of an existing user group (it is not used for editing the membership of the group). You can specify any combination of the parameters labeled as optional.
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: User group sucessfully updated

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getUserGroupMembers getUserGroupMembers

getUserGroupMembers

Use this command to get the current members of a group. Note that it is possible for a group to have no members.
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: Membership retrieved
followed by one user per line in username@affiliation form

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addUsersToGroup addUsersToGroup

addUsersToGroup

Use this command to add users to an existing user group. Note: The users will either need to already exist in VCL or be part of an affiliation that is backed by LDAP so that the users can be verified.
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: Users sucessfully added to group

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removeUsersFromGroup removeUsersFromGroup

removeUsersFromGroup

Use this command to remove users from an existing user group.
parameters:

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on success, returns:
SUCCESS: Users sucessfully removed from group

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emptyGroupMembership emptyGroupMembership

emptyGroupMembership

Use this command to empty the membership of an existing user group.
parameters:

...

on success, returns:
SUCCESS: Users sucessfully removed from group

Examples

The last example includes the authentication information on the command line. For the other examples, the authentication would have been specified inline in the script. Authentication information was only included in one example to make the others more readable.

Create a new user group with name FallUsers, affiliation Local, admin as the owner, and adminUsers@Local as the managing group:

managegroups.py addUserGroup -n FallUsers -a Local -o admin@Local -m adminUsers@Local -i 240 -t 360 -x 30

Change the name of an existing user group named FallUsers, affiliation Local to be SpringUsers:

managegroups.py editUserGroup -n FallUsers -a Local -N SpringUsers

Add two users specified on the command line to a group:

managegroups.py addUsersToGroup -n FallUsers -a Local -l student1<at:var at:name="Local,student2" />Local

Add all users in a specified file to a group:

managegroups.py addUsersToGroup -n FallUsers -a Local -f newusers.txt

The file would contain something like the following:

userid1@Local
userid2@Local
userid3@Local

Remove all members of a group:

managegroups.py emptyGroupMembership -n CS101 -a Local

Delete a user group:

managegroups.py -u admin@Local -p passwordhere -r 'https://your.vcl.site/index.php?mode=xmlrpccall' deleteUserGroup -n CS101 -a Local