Page's Author

Next release of TYPO3 (version 4.2) will allow the page’s author to be manually defined. That’s great, but yet this information is not being updated at all! However, current database’s schema already contains columns cruser_id (creation user id), author (author’s name) and author_email (author’s email) for tables pages and pages_language_overlay.

Unfortunately, only column cruser_id is being set when the page is created. The solution is straightforward for current version of TYPO3 as one only needs to install extension fhm_author. Once installed, this extension will take care of update fields author and author_email each time a page content element is updated. Thus, these columns contain information about the latest writer.

TypoScript How-To

lib.Author = TEXT
lib.Author {
	data = page:author
	typolink.parameter.data = page:author_email
}

Database Update

The extension fhm_author will not update those two fields until the page is being modified. In order to speed up the process, it is possible to update this information using a SQL query against the TYPO3 database. The request below will update columns author and author_email using the field cruser_id.

UPDATE pages SET
    author = (
        SELECT realName
        FROM be_users u
        WHERE u.uid = pages.cruser_id
    ),
    author_email = (
        SELECT email
        FROM be_users u
        WHERE u.uid = pages.cruser_id
    )
WHERE doktype = 1 AND author = '' AND author_email = '';
 
UPDATE pages_language_overlay SET
    author = (
        SELECT realName
        FROM be_users u
        WHERE u.uid = pages.cruser_id
    ),
    author_email = (
        SELECT email
        FROM be_users u
        WHERE u.uid = pages.cruser_id
    )
WHERE doktype = 1 AND author = '' AND author_email = '';