Joomla Community builder has a built in lost password facility that allows for the automatic reset of the password contained in an email sent to the user. The user can then log in with the new password and change it from within the community builder profile.

Often times people dont remember their usernames, only their email address. However, without the username, the form will not submit and the password will not be sent. 

Let us take a closer look at the code so we can modify it to use just the email address and not the username.

The first thing we are going to change is the way the form itself looks. We are going to remove the username text box from the form.

Open comprofiler.html.php under components/com_comprofiler look for a function called lostPassForm($option) on line 959.

Modify the function to look like this:

Now open the file comprofiler.php located in components/com_comprofiler. Look for the function sendNewPass( $option ) on line 856.

Modify it to look like this:

function sendNewPass( $option ) { global $_CB_database, $Itemid; global $ueConfig,$_PLUGINS; // for _NEWPASS_MSG and _NEWPASS_SUB : global $mosConfig_live_site, $mosConfig_sitename; // simple spoof check security cbSpoofCheck(); // ensure no malicous sql gets past //$checkusername = trim( cbGetParam( $_POST, 'checkusername', '') ); $confirmEmail = trim( cbGetParam( $_POST, 'confirmEmail', '') ); $_PLUGINS->loadPluginGroup('user'); $_PLUGINS->trigger( 'onStartNewPassword', array( &$checkusername, &$confirmEmail )); if ($_PLUGINS->is_errors()) { echo "<script type="\"text/javascript\"">alert('".addslashes($_PLUGINS->getErrorMSG())."'); window.history.go(-1); </script>\n"; exit(); } // these two are used by _NEWPASS_SUB message below: $_live_site = $mosConfig_live_site; $_sitename = ""; // NEEDED BY _NEWPASS_SUB for sitename already added in subject by cbNotification class. was = $mosConfig_sitename; $_CB_database->setQuery( "SELECT id FROM #__users" . "\nWHERE email='$confirmEmail'" ); if (!($user_id = $_CB_database->loadResult()) || !$confirmEmail) { cbRedirect(sefRelToAbs("index.php?option=$option&task=lostPassword".($Itemid ? "&Itemid=".$Itemid : "")),_ERROR_PASS ); } $newpass = cbMakeRandomString( 8, true ); $message = _NEWPASS_MSG; eval ("\$message = \"$message\";"); $subject = _NEWPASS_SUB; eval ("\$subject = \"$subject\";"); $_PLUGINS->trigger( 'onBeforeNewPassword', array( $user_id, &$newpass, &$subject, &$message )); if ($_PLUGINS->is_errors()) { echo "<script type="\"text/javascript\"">alert('".addslashes($_PLUGINS->getErrorMSG())."'); window.history.go(-1); </script>\n"; exit(); } $cbNotification = new cbNotification(); $res = $cbNotification->sendFromSystem($user_id,$subject,$message); if ($res) { $_PLUGINS->trigger( 'onNewPassword', array($user_id,$newpass)); $newpass = cbHashPassword( $newpass ); $sql = "UPDATE #__users SET password = '" . $_CB_database->getEscaped( $newpass ) . "' WHERE id = " . (int) $user_id; $_CB_database->setQuery( $sql ); if (!$_CB_database->query()) { die("SQL error" . $_CB_database->stderr(true)); } cbRedirect(sefRelToAbs("index.php?option=$option&task=done".($Itemid ? "&Itemid=".$Itemid : "")),_NEWPASS_SENT ); } else { cbRedirect(sefRelToAbs("index.php?option=$option&task=done".($Itemid ? "&Itemid=".$Itemid : "")),_UE_NEWPASS_FAILED ); } }

 The lost password feature should now have ony an email address field and should use the email as a where criteria while retrieving the random value assigned to the password field.