Zend_Auth and dynamically changing user details on the UI - php

Question

When my users are logged in I display their details (name, email) on the UI. When they update their profile, I would like to show the updated details, without requiring the user to log out and back in.
The UI details are retrieved from Zend_Auth via a view helper. Zend_Auth is storing the 'identity' details in a session.
How should I go about updating the details in the session?:
I was considering retrieving the user's login credentials from the database and using them to call Zend_Auth->authenticate() again. The problem is that I don't know the password, only it's md5 hash. I could consider a new method, reauthenticate(), which configured the adapter to bypass the md5 and salt, but this sounds laborious.
I was considering writing directly to the Zend_Auth session namespace, but this sounds like a recipe for trouble?
Have you come across a similar problem? How did you handle it?
Your ideas are much appreciated!

Answer 1

You can update Zend_auth identity for the currently logged user. Very simplified action that updates only username could be as follows:
public function editAction() {
// check if user is logged, etc, and then
// show the edit user form and process the data after submission.
$userForm = new My_Form_EditUser();
if ($this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
if ($userForm->isValid($_POST)) {
// process the submitted data,
// and when you are sure that everything went ok,
// update the zend_auth identity
$authData = Zend_Auth::getInstance()->getIdentity();
// this line would depend on the format of your
// identity data and a structure of your
// actual form.
$authData->property->nickname = $formData['user']['nickname'];
$this->_helper->FlashMessenger('Your data was changed');
return $this->_redirect('/');
}
}
$this->view->form = $userForm;
}
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

What I really want is a method on Zend_Auth::setIdentity($user).
But in the absence of such a method, I have used a hack in which I have create an auth adapter that always returns success and sets the identity to the same user object I would have created in a "real" auth adapter. Then I just call Zend_Auth::authenticate($adapter) with that adapter and it sets the identity internally.
Now, looking mosre closely at the internals of Zend_Auth::authenticate(), I see that what we could do is just:
Zend_Auth::getInstance()->getStorage()->write($user);

Answer 3

Here's how I solved the problem for the time being. Not sure yet if it's the best solution:
create a wrapper for Zend_Auth
include a getAuthAdapter($raw) method
configure the adapter differently, depending on the value of $raw
if (false === $raw) {
$this->_authAdapter->setCredentialTreatment('SHA1(CONCAT(?,salt))');
} else {
$this->_authAdapter->setCredentialTreatment();
}