Bug Wrong documentation for PlayerName API

The documentation for getting a player name is wrong: https://docs.unity.com/authentication/en-us/manual/player-name-management#Getting_player_name

It mentions there that

AuthenticationService.Instance.GetPlayerNameAsync()

returns null if no player name has been found. However, this is plain wrong, it returns a random collection of words put together! The cached value

AuthenticationService.Instance.PlayerName

returns null, if it has not yet been called with the Get method.

How are we supposed to know if a user already has a player name or not?

Used version of the Authentication SDK: 2.7.1

 

After investigating the 2.7.1 SDK version, it is indeed true that it auto generates a name!

The

AuthenticationServiceInternal

's

GetPlayerNameAsync()

method calls the

PlayerNamesApi.GetNameAsync(...)

method which has the following description:

Code (CSharp):

1. /// <summary>
2. /// Get a player&#39;s username. Get a player&#39;s username. The &#39;/me&#39; endpoint can be used to get the username of the calling player.
3. /// </summary>
4. /// <exception cref="ApiException">Thrown when fails to make API call</exception>
5. /// <param name="playerId">The player&#39;s ID.</param>
6. /// <param name="autoGenerate">Indicates if a player without a name should have one auto generated or not. Defaults to true. (optional)</param>
7. /// <param name="showMetadata">If true, returns additional metadata like &#39;autoGenerated&#39; with records. Defaults to false. (optional)</param>
8. /// <param name="cancellationToken">Cancellation Token to cancel the request.</param>
9. /// <returns>Task of Player</returns>

See the

/// <param name="autoGenerate">Indicates if a player without a name should have one auto generated or not. Defaults to true. (optional)</param>

?

The method contains this check here:

if (autoGenerate != null)

However, the method parameter is defined like this:

bool? autoGenerate = default(bool?)

To my knowledge, this means that the check results to true, because false (the default value of a boolean) is not equal to null, confirming that the player name is auto generated!

 

Thanks for correcting the docs, but the question still remains:

- How do we know that this is a fresh user account in order to prompt the user for a name?

The only option I can see is for example to try and get a cloud save key e.g. "freshAccount" and if that key doesn‘t exist prompt for a name, otherwise use the player name from the auth service.

 

This is only correct if the PlayerName property is filled with the correct value upon initializing the services. From my tests a few months back (and written in my initial post) this was not the case, you had to first call the Get method to get a value at all.

Edit: Yes, the issue is still there. The cached player name is, as its name implies, only cached upon first calling the GetPlayerName() method. If it is not called first, it will always return null.

@Laurie-Unity your code does unfortunately not work. It also does not work if an existing user signs in on a new device. The PlayerName property will return null there.