String remoteUserId = request.getRemoteUser();
Gets you the string of the remote userId which will be something like "liferay.com.1" or whatever.
That might be enough for you... and you can stop there... however for my uses I
need the email address and other user info... so...
Then I use the UserServiceSoapProxy to get data about the user. These classes are in the portal-client.jar or you can point your SOAP client generator at the WSDL file at: http://localhost:8080/tunnel/axis ( assuming your host is localhost running on port 8080 ) and have it generate a client for you... or you could write your own... whatever makes you happy.
Now that you have a SOAP proxy...
First, set it up to talk to the correct endpoint ( something like http://hostname:port/tunnel/axis/Portal_UserService ) which I can figure out by doing:
int port = request.getServerPort();
String host = request.getServerName();
String scheme = request.getScheme();
You assemble your SOAP endpoint string like this:
String endpoint = scheme + "://" + host + ":" Integer.toString(port) +
"/tunnel/axis/Portal_UserService";
Then when you want to talk to the Liferay User service...
usrSvc = new UserServiceSoapProxy();
usrSvc.setEndpoint(endpoint);
UserModel user = usrSvc.getUserById(request.getRemoteUser());
The service uses the same permissions scheme as the portal. So your logged in users can only do through the services whatever they can do through the regular portals. That means you still need to understand permissions and such. But, I'll bet nearly every user has permission to look at their own information.
Nothing liferay specific about:
String remoteUserId = request.getRemoteUser();
either... and using the SOAP service to get more info about the user means your code stays nice and separate. Probably makes upgrading liferay easier later on... and keeps you from mucking around with liferay internals too much.
