Re: chasing referrals

[Kurt D. Z. <Ku...@Op...>]

At 08:37 AM 10/18/00 +0100, Chris Ridd wrote:
>Graham Barr <gb...@po...> wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 05:27:49PM -0700, Robbie Allen wrote:
>>> Can Net::LDAP automatically chase referrals?  Sample code?
>> 
>> Not yet. Currently you have to follow them yourself. You can
>> get them with
>> 
>>   $mesg = $ldap->search( ... );
>>   @referrals = $mesg->referrals;
>> 
>> Graham.
>
>I'm not sure Net::LDAP should ever automatically follow referrals - not
>knowing what authentication to use is a pretty major problem. Deciding
>which one to follow if there are several for the same point is another
>(equally critical in some environments) problem.
>
>Referral following is something that needs to be addressed in the
>application (eg GUI) rather than down at the API level. IMHO of course.

I concur that the low-level API should have not chase referrals.
The abstraction at the low-level should be a "protocol" session.

This, of course, doesn't mean you cannot have a higher level API
which provides different abstractions.  For example, one could
create a "Directory" abstraction which managed multiple protocol
sessions.

Kurt