Querying user settings

Question

Hi,
After quite a bit of experience developing ASP gadgets for version 4.5, we've recently moved to Plumtree version 5 and .Net.
One thing we would like to be able to do is provide a web service for use by other applications (outside the portal) which could request the retrieval of a specific User setting for a given user.
I've seen some examples of similar challenges, but still a bit bewildered how to go about this (on the Plumtree side of things, the actual process of building our own web service is fine).
The web service will be built with .Net & WSE, on a server with the Plumtree EDK installed. I've checked and our Plumtree installation also has the PTAPI QueryInterfaceAPI web service available.
Should I use a PRC session, and impersonate the user I need to get the settings for, or will setting up a session as an admin user be sufficient to query the User settings object for another user?
Any help offered would be gratefully received.
Thanks,
Charles

Answer 1

Sorry - I'm a doofus. I didn't read your post completely.
You're right - if you want to attach to this service w/o going through Plumtree/BEA first to obtain a login ID you'd need to impersonate a user (I'd suggest a secured admin account where the credentials are encrypted).
Try this... (server API)
In your web.config
<appSettings> <add key="UserID" value="administrator" /> <add key="UserPassword" value="" /></appSettings>
Encrypt these or do something to protect them.
Read: How to use the ASP.NET utility to encrypt credentials and session state connection strings
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329290
Code Sample for Password Reset (Similar thing)
'//create an admin connection Dim ptAdminSession As IPTSession = New Session 'PortalObjectsFactory.CreateSession ptAdminSession.Connect("administrator", "", Nothing) '//reference web.config values instead
Dim sNewPassword As String = ""
'//start user impersonation Dim ptUserSessionTemp As IPTSession = ptAdminSession.ImpersonateUser(iUserID)
'//get the user's email address Dim sEmail As String = "" sEmail = ptUserSessionTemp.GetUserInfo.GetEmail
If sEmail.Length > 0 Then '//open the user for editing Dim oUser As IPTUser = ptAdminSession.GetUsers().Open(iUserID, True)
'//reset the password oUser.SetPassword(sNewPassword)
'//mungle with server context - don't ask why we do this after we have a handle on the object - I don't know '//there's likely a very good reason for it, I'm sure Dim mySC As IPTServerContext = oUser.GetInterfaces("IPTServerContext") mySC.Store() mySC.UnlockObject()
'//send email
Else '//throw an exception here - return "no email address"
End If