WeberDev.com has posted part three of their "User Authentication With patUser" series today, detailing some of the aditional functionality the patUser package has to offer.

While the API for user and group management does form the core of the patUser library, it's not all there is on display. patUser also includes a number of utility functions that can come in handy for certain specialized tasks.

These functions include identifying users and groups by different criteria (such as name or email address); keeping track of the URLs visited by the user so as to generate a user trail; maintaining user account statistics for auditing purposes; and providing exception-handling routines for more graceful error handling.

They give the details on how to:

• make exceptions,
• track the user's history through the site,
• perform a natural selection search on user data,
• how to identify users,
• record stats about the user's activities

With this tutorial they finish off the series, providing a good solid overview of the patUser package. If you're just now reading the series, be sure to check out part one and part two.