Can I call synchroniseUserDirectories (ConfluenceRpc) via REST, SOAP or XML-RPC? - rest

Question

I am using Confluence 4.2.5 (build 3284) with CAS SSO connected to my LDAP server and would like to be able to call synchroniseUserDirectories() from the LDAP server when a user changes their password so that the change is instantaneous.
The way it works now is that users have to wait for the Confluence to run it's periodic LDAP synchronization which can be disconcerting for them.
I have tried using the XML-RPC interface to call changeUserPassword() (as an administrator) but it doesn't work. The operation raises an exception "Error changing password for user ...". I presume that that is because the user is defined in the LDAP but I can't tell for sure because the exception message wasn't clear about the cause.
Here is example code that I would like to be able to use. It doesn't work.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import xmlrpclib
url = 'https://docs.example.com'
admin_user = 'frobisher'
admin_pass = 'supersecretstuff'
username = 'bigbob'
new_password = 'bigbobsbigsecret'
server = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy(url + '/rpc/xmlrpc')
token = server.confluence2.login(admin_user, admin_pass)
# CITATION: https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Remote+Confluence+Methods
# this doesn't exist but would be my preferred approach.
# It raises a NoSuchMethodException exception.
server.confluence2.synchroniseUserDirectories(token)
# this throws a general exception, because of the LDAP? The message
# wasn't clear about the source of the problem.
#server.confluence2.changeUserPassword(token,
# username,
# password)
server.confluence2.logout(token)
Is there any way to do this using SOAP or REST? I was concerned about REST because it sounds like it is still a prototype.
If none of those approaches will work, can it be done with a simple plugin considering that this must be a push operation from the LDAP server to the Confluence server? I have no experience writing plugins but I do some java work occasionally.
Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The short answer is "no". The ability to synchronise remote user directories is not exposed as a remote operation in Confluence.
The long answer is "yes", you can write a plugin to do this. If you're already familiar with java, then perhaps the best answer is to just show you some source code I've written that performs a similar function: https://bitbucket.org/jaysee00/confluence-user-sync-api This plugin gives you SOAP, XML-RPC and JSON-RPC methods to force an individual user account to be synced in to Confluence from a remote directory.
That might suit your purposes as-is, but I imagine it would be possible to edit the source of this plugin and change it to synchronise an entire directory, too.