SharePoint Online: Getting Current User Information

Question

What is the best way to get the current users information. With the UserProfileService unavailable in SharePoint Online what would be the best method for getting a users information.

Client was looking to use the UPS automatically populate a form. I have tried getting data from the User Information List using REST but that hasn't provided any results as of yet. What about using Access Services, is this feasible, I have started looking into it now but when trying to map to SharePoint Online as the data source the User Information list doesn't show as an option.

Is using/knowing App Model/Object Model the only way to go here? The client was hoping to not need a developer to build this, hoping they could still allow power users to build these capabilities out.

This is to support an extranet scenario so I don't think the social REST feed is going to be of help here because of the external users.

I haven't found much yet in the way of best practices or methods for getting this info with SharePoint Online.

Answer 1

Using SPServices' GetCurrentUser function you can get all sorts of fields on the current user. Straight from the documentation, here is an explanation of how it works(which BTW I think is brilliant):

How It Works

The SPGetCurrentUser function does an AJAX call to grab /_layouts/userdisp.aspx?Force=True and "scrapes" the values from the page based on the internal field name (aka StaticName).

Answer 2

Going to shamelessly plug my blog:

To get the current user information in SharePoint Online,

You can use the REST API to get UserProfile properties:

http://www.vrdmn.com/2013/07/sharepoint-2013-get-userprofile.html

Or you can use the JavaScript CSOM:

http://www.vrdmn.com/2013/02/sharepoint-2013-working-with-user.html

Hope this is helpful