New API methods to retrieve last activity date

Description

Last activity date for a user field in the DB creates problems (see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/1158). We need to move the data to Redis and query it with an API.

Proposal

• Create new methods in the API to retrieve last activity date
• Restricted to admin role
• Retrieve the information:
  • User information
  • Last activity timestamp
  • Ordered by oldest by default

cc @jameslopez

Mentioned in issue #1158 (closed)

Mentioned in merge request !915 (merged)

mentioned in merge request !962 (merged)

Can I ask why this is to be restricted to admin users only when user activity is visible on a public profile page?

Could this satisfy this other related feature proposal?

• https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14707

Is this an EE-only change?

@markglenfletcher this is quite different from the activity feed - it measures how many users are active in the system (mainly Git operations and a user logging in). This API will display a list of usernames and last activity timestamps, not sure we want to allow anybody to access this. This is not restricted to a particular project or group, but to the whole instance - so I think an admin restriction makes sense.

Is this an EE-only change?

Yep, this is a customer request to check for inactive users during a period of time, in order to verify which EE license they need... So if they get an API response like:

{
	"username": "random_user",
	"last_activity_at": "10-02-2015"
}, 
...

It will lead us to think that this user is not very active, and hence shouldn't count for an EE license - and they may want to disable it.

/cc @regisF - correct me if I'm wrong :)

@jameslopez Thanks for clarifying!

@jameslopez you are right indeed.

closed via merge request !962 (merged)

mentioned in issue gitlab-com/infrastructure#1018 (closed)

mentioned in commit e4ebc1ee

mentioned in commit 416af8c9