Grouper Developers Forum

[Tom Barton <>]

blair christensen wrote:
> On 2005.01.24 10:01, GW Brown, Information Systems and Computing wrote:
> > OK . May be raises the question as to whether there ought to be methods 
> > that load by name if that is 'unsafe'?
>
>
> Well, I wouldn't call it 'unsafe'.  However, the only reliable,
> persistent and public handle for a group is the group id.  However,
> being able to load a group by name is also useful, especially when one
> has a name but not a stem, extension, or group id.  
>
> Perhaps I just need to clarify the API docs for the group loading
> methods?

A site's practices might entail having unique names, and if so they may 
wish to load groups by name in their custom Grouper API clients. But the 
Grouper UI can't make that assumption. For it, the only safe and 
site-independent means of referring fundamentally to groups is by group id.

Tom