Here's an example from my CAS module. 

        // Become user 1 to be able to save profile information
         $admin = array('uid'=> 1);
         $user = user_load($admin);

If you're operating as a normal user you'll want to save away the value of the current user, become admin , do your save stuff, then become the normal user again. Something like: 

   global $user;  
   $temp_user = $user; 
   $admin= array('uid' => 1); 
   $user = user_load($admin); 

   ... do some save stuff

   $user = user_load($temp_user); 


This of course should only be used when you're trying to circumvent permissions checked by user_save() (do you have permissions to modify user roles for example). 

I thought there used to be code in cron.php to do this, but I think I may just be remembering wrong. Perhaps someone else on the dev list could answer the question of who the cron user executes as. 

As I said, not 100% sure this is your problem, but I do know you'll have problems having generic users sync up their roles unless you do this permissions escalation. 

On Feb 5, 2008, at 5:46 AM, Neil Goodman wrote:

No, how do I go about transitioning to user 1 for the save operations?

Right now I just call the function and I assume the permissions would be of whoever is using the module at the time. How do permissions get determined with things like hook_cron()?

Neil Goodman

On Feb 4, 2008 10:44 PM, David Metzler <metzlerd@metzlerd.com> wrote:
Last time I ran into something close to this it was because of permissions.  Are you transitioning to user 1 for the save operations? 

Might be completely off base.... but that's my experience. 

On Feb 4, 2008, at 5:34 PM, Neil Goodman wrote:

Hello,

I'm currently trying to solve a bug report for my module (http://drupal.org/node/217639). rallycivic keeps getting a "__clone method called on non-object"  when he runs a function in my module. My module runs through a CiviCRM database and pulls out certain CiviCRM contacts that have membership status. The goal is to get this status synchronized to a Drupal role. There is a static method in the CiviCRM API called CRM_Core_BAO_UFMatch::getUFId(). This method will take a CiviCRM contact id and return its corresponding Drupal uid. I then take this list of uids and pass it to the user_multiple_role_edit() function. This function uses the user_save() function to apply role changes. I think that one of rallcivic's uids is causing an issue with this function. From reading the user_save() function's code I can see that it tries to create a new user if the uid doesn't exist. For some reason I think it is trying to do this on a valid uid, which throws a duplicate error that rallycivic has found in watchdog:

"Location http://chelmsfordmc.co.uk/admin/settings/civimember_roles/manual_sync
Referrer http://chelmsfordmc.co.uk/admin/settings/civimember_roles/manual_sync
Message Duplicate entry '' for key 2 query: INSERT INTO users (uid, created, access) VALUES (404, 1202163268, 1202163268) in /home/chelmsf/public_html/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 172."

Then the drupal_clone() function is called on a bogus object and throws the clone method error. At least, that is what I think is happening.

Has anyone ran into a situation similar to this before?

Neil Goodman