Difference between userKey and (Entity) Id

[Colin Sauvanet]

Hello Community,

Looking at the result of a Rest call to rest/prototype/1/search/user.json , I can see one of the results as:

"id": "1146881",
"type": "user",
"title": "Group1User1",
"wikiLink": "[~g1u1]",
"createdDate": {...},
"creator": { ...},
"lastModifier":{...},
"username": "g1u1",
"userKey": "2c99dbad4e2ee94f014e2ef92bf90001",
"thumbnailLink": { ...}

It seems there are 2 unique identifiers for a User:

• The "id" (contentEntity ID ?)
• The "userKey"

Why do we have 2 unique identifiers ?

I can access "userKey" using via a ConfluenceUser object, but how can I access "id" information from Java code ?

Thanks,

Colin

[lavitz slambert]

Giving you a background for your first question, currently in confluence we have two main tables that hold the user information:

• cwd_user
• cwd_membership
• user_mapping

The id is the key used to bind a user into a group through the cwd_membership table, the user key is a hash used to represent the user from the cwd_user in user_mapping table.

In the past, prior 5.2.3 all the references in confluence where made against the user_name instead an id, that used to cause a lot of problems on the user management area (duplicated users, not able to rename users, permissions being lost).

In 5.2.3 atlassian added the user_mapping table and updated every table to make reference to the user_key instead the user name. That made possible for users to rename their logins and even if they had content created and also reduced those problems I listed previously.

As for accessing the id information I don't know how to achieve that .

Hope it helps.

Lavitz - the guy that uses Confluence on Windows as a Hobby!

[Colin Sauvanet]

Hi Lavitz, Thanks for clarification, I might be able to search in right direction. I need this ID to generate links to user profile (not using the username, Atlassian do this by generating links to : {host}/rest/prototype/1/content/{user_id}

[Colin Sauvanet]

It looks like I should find a way to get this object: https://docs.atlassian.com/confluence/latest/com/atlassian/confluence/it/UserInformation.html

[lavitz slambert]

Glad I was able to help you ;).

[Milo Test]

Is there a way to connect a user_name to a user_key or merge user_keys? We switched from built-in authentication to Active Directory and at least one user shows up as "unknown user" in the "Created" and "Modified" lines on pages.

[lavitz slambert]

Is not impossible, depending on the scenario you have, can you raise a new answer topic asking for that and commenting as a reply to this comment so we can better organize this post? If you do that I can ask you a couple questions to better assist you :).

[Milo Test]

Done. https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/18811326/is-there-a-way-to-connect-a-username-to-a-userkey-or-merge-userkeys