Unique user identifier

[Matt Bowen]

I am working on a poll application, and for it, it's useful to know (1) who created each poll and (2) who voted on each poll. In both contexts, I have $this->_user, from which I can access screenName and email and pass into my poll models accordingly. I want a unique attribute (to protect ownership) that I can link back to a profile (to give users credit for their work).

Are screen names are guaranteed to be unique within at least my network (even if they're not guaranteed across to be unique across ning)?

If screen names aren't unique, I am pretty sure email address will be, but then, does anyone know any API to retrieve a user or profile object from an email address?

[Dominic Claxton]

Hi Matt,
I want to do a similar thing. How do you pick up the id of a particular user?
For example: If I come to the site as 'Person A' and click on a members image ('Person B') I get taken to their page. How then do I run a script on that page that picks up the details of Peson B and displays it to Person A. I can't seem to run any php scripts anywhere.
Any clues would be great.

[Matt Bowen]

Hi Dominic,

Do you have code access to your ning site? I think that's the first step to modifying pages to add new scripts/behaviors.