Login by email only is *necessary* for our site

To be honest, this is a really trivial request, and someone with a little bit of knowledge can easily implement a custom validation hook to the user registration form to do this.

If this belongs in logintoboggan or not is a different issue.

The solution suggested at #1 would work fine. You just need a custom validation function that checks that the data being submitted is a valid email. Here's a link to an explanation of how to do form validation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5299582/how-to-do-form-validation-in-...
You might want to combine the server side validation with something like this for client-side validation to get better ux: http://drupal.org/project/clientside_validation

To implement the suggestion at #1 you would write a custom module with a form_alter hook that added an extra validation function to the existing array of validation functions. The hook is documented here: http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules%21system%21system.api.php/funct...

Once you've added your custom function to the form_alter hook, it would be quite straightforward to write a function that checks the data from the name field to ensure that what's been submitted is an email.

This approach, incidentally, is definitely not a hack of anything but a standard implementation of Drupal's forms API using the hook system to interact with the core rather than hack it.

I'm not intending to add this to logintoboggan for now, but if you're really struggling I can write something for you that shows how it's done.

Here are the beginnings of the solution. Simply hide the username field and copy the email field into the username. Note: I found that by setting our validation routine to the start I could rely on other modules (system, logintoboggan) to provide the validation of the email address. Its not perfect (if you supply an already used email address you get two warnings: one for user, one for mail). And some characters that are permitted in email addresses are illegal in usernames. But its a start.

<?php
/*
 * Implements hook_form_alter
 */
function MYTHEME_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
  if ( $form_id == 'user_register_form' ) {
    // hide the username field
    $form['account']['name']['#required'] = false;
    $form['account']['name']['#type'] = 'hidden';
    // add our validation callback first
    array_unshift($form['#validate'], '_MYTHEME_user_register_validation');
  }
}

/*
 * Copy the email address into the username form.
 */
function _MYTHEME_user_register_validation($form, &$form_state) {
  $email = $form_state['values']['mail'];
  $form_state['values']['name'] = $email;
  return TRUE;
}

Changing category and component to represent that this issue forms documentation for the module rather than a proposed feature.

Hi queenvictoria,

Kind of an old thread.

The code you provided works like a charm. My only dilemma is that the name field in the core Users table is only 60 characters in length, where as, the mail field is 254. So I see this as a potential problem.

Have you implemented this on a live site with lots of users and seen any adverse side-effects? Is there any problems with changing the length of the core name field from 60 to 254? Will there be issues when I try to upgrade my Drupal 7.x.xx version to the newest 7.x.xx version?

The Email Registration module is another solution but my OCD hates seeing random numbers thrown into usernames created based off of the email addresses entered. I'd also have to go search and replace a lot of tokens (email templates, themes, etc.) going this route to eliminate the username from showing.

It seems strange that Drupal is still using Usernames where as every other App, Social Media platform, E-commerce site, etc. are strictly using e-mails as the norm since their unique to an individual.

Any advice on issues with modifying a core Drupal table would be appreciated. Thanks.

#6 worked for me...

thanks queenvictoria !