Question

So during login, I want to check if the user is in a specific customer group and prevent login if that check fails.

I have extended the AccountController, and added in a quick check:

$customer = Mage::getModel('customer/customer')->loadByEmail($login['username']);
if ($customer->getGroupId() != 2) {
    $msg = Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->addError($this->__('You must have a wholesale account to access this area.'));
    header('Location: '. Mage::getUrl('customer/account/login'));
    exit;
}

However, running this returns session error message, “Customer website ID must be specified when using the website scope”.

Basically, I just need to grab the group id of the user who is attempting to login, and I figured I could grab this through the method supplied in the customer model, loadByEmail(). But yeah, it’s Friday, and apparently the MageLords want me to stay late.

I have tried a number of methods to get this working, including allowing the login, then checking the ID, then doing $session->logout() if the check fails, but this was preventing me from displaying a session error message since the logout() method is clearing all session messages (including ‘core/session’).

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should set website_id before working with loadByEmail method. I know, it seems weird, but this is dictated by the fact, that customer could be a website-scoped entity. So the loadByEmail method will throw exception if customer model is not assigned to any website.

$customer = Mage::getModel('customer/customer');
$customer->setWebsiteId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getWebsiteId())
        ->loadByEmail($login['username']);