ldap->ping?

[David B. <d.b...@ma...>]

Anyone else see this as a potential for a new module (gee.. how about
::Status or ::Util::Status ?)

containing functions/objects/whatever that query the ldap server to find
out what it's capable of?
ie:
is it "up"? - with an anonymous bind
is is "up"? - with a malformed packet request
is it version 2 or version 3 compliant?
does it support ssl/sasl/whatever?
does it limit search requests? (and what are they)
does it have timeouts? (and what are they)

Mind you, if this was written, it'd be very tempting to include something
to test for "type" of ldap server eg Netscape/openldap/novell and introduce
server specific tests too.... is this a good or a bad thing?

David.

P.S. regarding the Ldap::Cooked (or whatever)...  I for one like the option
of a simple "foolproof" API that is smart enough to figure out things like
the ldap version to talk with(currently 3 falling back to 2), whether ssl
is supported on the server end (with a fall-back if its not), if searches
are limited then automatically do multiple searches invisibly, etc etc.



At 01:21 PM 7/27/00 +0100, John Berthels wrote:
>On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Graham Barr wrote:
>
>> > I can't think of a simple and portable way to do this in LDAPv2.
>> 
>> You mean instead of deliberatly sending a malformed packet and expecting
>> an error response. But thats probbaly too evil :)
>
>Heh. I didn't have the gall to suggest that.
>
>You could do something like issue a hopefully-low-impact search request.
>(scope=single entry, pick a base, have an explicit filter
>(cn=hopedoesntexist), ask for only 'cn' attribute back). But it still
>feels icky.
>
>
>On the issue of 'layers over Net::LDAP', I must have missed the "we don't
>want sizelimit etc. management". Is there a real desire for a more
>'cooked' API? (I quite like the current one...). Things like
>$ldap->exists( $dn ) might be nice though.
>
>Whether that API lived in the Net::LDAP namespace/bundle or elsewhere
>shouldn't be relevant to what it could do - what do people want? Do we
>want a Net::LDAP::Cooked or Net::LDAPCooked module? If so what kind of
>features would people want?
>
>jb
>
>
>
>
>

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David Bussenschutt          Email: D.B...@ma...
Senior Computing Support Officer & Systems Administrator/Programmer
Location: Griffith University. Information Technology Services
          Brisbane Qld. Aust.  (TEN bldg. rm 1.33) Ph: (07)38757079
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