Case-insensitive identifiers and emails in Alma
Case sensitivity in computer programs determines how fields values are treated. Case-sensitive means that the computer program only matches values with the same case (lower/upper). Case-insensitive means the program ignores case and matches values regardless of their lower or upper case letters, e.g. “My Name” = “my name”).
Alma has always treated primary identifiers in user records as case-insensitive. So if you searched for a user with the primary ID of “jsmith”, the user record whose primary ID is actually “JSmith” would be found. However, email addresses and additional identifiers were always considered case-sensitive in Alma. When searching for a value you needed to know exactly how it was stored in Alma. From the September 2018 release, two significant changes have been made.
Case-insensitive emails
Now Alma ignore case when searching for email addresses. This means that when searching for an email in Alma in lower case, as below (‘josh.weisman@test.com’):
We find the regardless of how the email is stored (‘Josh.Weisman@test.com’):
This is especially important for those who use the “Login via email” option for authentication. Now regardless of which case a user enters their email in the email field, s/he will be able to receive the magic login link to their email mailbox:
In addition, searching for a user record via the Retrieve Users API will yield results regardless of the case of the email address:
https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/users?q=email~josh.weisman@test.com
Case-insensitive identifiers
For customers who’s first test load occurred after June 2018, Alma will treat additional identifiers as case-insensitive as well. This means that when searching for a student ID which includes letters, you can search a value in any case (i.e. ‘BV123456’):
And Alma will treat the value as lowercase (i.e. ‘bv123456’):
This is helpful when searching for user records by additional identifier or when using an additional identifier to authenticate in Alma.
In addition, when searching for a user by additional identifiers using the Retrieve Users API, the record will be found regardless of the case provided:
https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/users/BV123456
https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/users/bv123456This new behavior should make it easier to work with email address and additional identifiers in Alma user records.
2 Replies to “Case-insensitive identifiers and emails in Alma”
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This doesn’t seem to be accurate anymore. I’m seeing that the user identifiers ARE case sensitive. If I do a Get user details call for the user abc123 but pass it Abc123 as the user_id, it returns with an error “User with identifier Abc123 was not found.”
If abc123 is the primary ID – that must work (Case-insensitive). If not, please open a case for Support.
If abc123 is an additional identifier it depends: Try typing AAA123 as an additional identifier and save. Does that change automatically to aaa123? If so, for your institution also additional identifiers are case-insensitive. If not, I guess you migrated to Alma before 2019 and for your institution, additional identifiers are case sensitive.