Future of ldapmodule

On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Sascha Gresk raved thusly:

> > Future of ldapmodule
> > Since I saw SWIG, I have since realised how much more simple and
> > portable I could have made this module. Most of the work is in
> > converting Python data structures into C data structures and testing
> > for errors and raising exceptions wherever possible.
> 
> This is just a beginning, but now I can start to use python and LDAP .

> LDAP
> LDAP/CVS
> LDAP/CVS/Root
> LDAP/CVS/Repository
> LDAP/CVS/Entries
> LDAP/ldapmodule.h
> LDAP/Makefile
> LDAP/lber.i
> LDAP/ldap.i
> LDAP/test.py
> LDAP/link.conf
> LDAP/link
> LDAP/VERSION
> LDAP/README.static
> LDAP/TODO
> LDAP/README

Sasha,

this looks like a great start!  much smaller and understandable. and even 
the lber interface is exposed.

but which particular LDAP library was this created against? the various ldap
header files that are around (netscape/openldap/umich) may not work with 
what you have - as not all those functions would be available everywhere
i reckon.

also, in order to retain the niceness features that the current module
has (exceptions, integrated memory management) a lot of wrapping needs to
happen. while it this is possible and probably a good design, keeping it
independent, there is still i believe some uncertainty about what the
'top level' python LDAP client API should look like.

i reckon the API should follow what CORBA are doing. Alternatively, the
python dbm module interface could be used - but X.500 DNs are just
so less compatible than most database's free-form keys... originally
I tried to base the python interface on an RFC, but it just doesn't seem
to fit very where. fo...@so... and mi...@ms... have some good
ideas in this area, but have been quiet of late.

> You are welcome to join and/or use this for extending your efforts to
> convince python to talk LDAP ...

so the .i files that you have shown me look like a nice way of getting
rid of a lot of redundant existing code, but at this first glance, i
think it needs a lot of work to get it to be more portable, and also 
our minds need to be made up on what the LDAP api should really look like..

i'd encourage you to work this into the python-ldap source tree.

d
-- 
David Leonard                           Dav...@cs...
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The University of Queensland       |+|  http://www.csee.uq.edu.au/~leonard/
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