Retrieving User Name in Sharepoint?

Question

Hi all,

How does Sharepoint retrieve the user's actual name as displayed in the top right corner? e.g Welcome John Smith

I need to call this name as a variable or parameter on custom code in the XSL editor but I can't figure out how I can retrieve it, is it a global variable?

Answer 1

I believe it's coming in through NTLM Authentication/Active Directory. I ususally get login name DOMAIN/User in the HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name field, and then match against Active Directory and bring back the actual name of the user.

Answer 2

SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser.LoginName will give you the value for the login name of the current user, as displayed in the top right of a standard portal.

If you want to use this with XSLT, you need to find a way of assigning this to an XSL parameter value at run-time.

Answer 3

You can get a user's account name using the server variable LOGON_USER. However, this doesn't return a user's Display name.

I was able to get something working which a combination of web parts to display their name:

1. Add a UserContextFilterWebPart (you may need to enable this web part in the web part gallery).
2. Add a DataView webpart which queries the GetUserInfo method (part of the UserGroup.asmx web service).
   • a. Click "Connect to a web service..." in the Data Source Library pane under XML Web Services
   • b. Enter the Service description location (the URL to the UserGroup web service). Ex: http://server/sites/SiteCollection/SubSite/_vti_bin/UserGroup.asmx?WSDL
   • c. Click Connect (or reconnect)
   • d. Choose GetUserInfo for the Operation dropdown (the other dropdowns should be ok)
   • e. Modify the userLoginName parameter and check the box to allow the value to be set via web part connection. I also added a default value to test (ex: domain\login).
   • f. Click OK.
   • g. Click on the data source and click Show Data
   • h. Choose the columns you need and then drag them onto the page
3. Connect them together using web part connections (UserContext provided to the DataView).