[development] Handling multiple e-mail log in IDs and passwords . . .

[Jason Flatt]

I'm in a bit of a quandary and I'm seeking ideas, opinions, insights, whatever 
to help me move forward.

I am, for the third time, building or modifying a module that has as one of 
its requirements the collecting of user data for logging into an e-mail 
account, i.e.: the user ID and password. For the previous two modules, I 
simply gave the administrator the option of specifying whether to use the 
account id and password from the users' account or to add additional fields in 
the users' registration and edit forms for collecting that information.

During the process of, basically, doing the same thing, it occurred to me that 
some folks might not want to use the Drupal account information, but they 
also might not want to have two or three or more areas to put in, quite 
possibly, the same information.

So, the question is, how to approach this? Do I go into every possible module 
that collects e-mail information, see where and how they store it and make it 
available for the users of my module(s). That seems like an effort in 
futility. Is there a module that already handles this and related situations? 
I didn't see any that looked like they did. How about API calls? That would 
be the ideal way, but, again, I didn't see any that looked like they did what 
I'm looking for. (That's not to say that neither module nor API call exists, 
just that I didn't see any that I thought addressed my needs.)

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on where to go, or do I just stick 
with the old stand by methods and end up with what I've been doing all along?


-- 
Jason Flatt
http://www.oadaeh.net/
Father of Six:  http://www.flattfamily.com/ (Joseph, 15; Cramer, 13; Travis, 
11; Angela; Harry, 8; and William, 2)
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