Re: dump method for binary values

[Chris R. <chr...@me...>]

Jim Harle <ha...@us...> wrote:
> I would like to see the dump method for entries made smarter about binary
> values of attributes.  Right now, it just dumps them as regular characters
> which messes up terminal emulators if the wrong values come across.  the
> ldapsearch command on Solaris shows a value of NOT ASCII for them, which
> is much friendlier.

Net::LDAP does not use the schema information in any way at present. This
is both good (lean and mean and it doesn't mess around with stuff) and bad
(sometimes confusing behaviour.)

So it currently cannot tell what is a 'binary' attribute. I guess by binary
attribute you mean 'human-readable', as per the table in section 4.3.2 of
RFC 2252, and not just those attributes with binary AttributeDescriptions.
Or do you just mean 'printable using the current display device'?

I have some diffs which are probably broken ATM which changes this. But it
also changes the existing value API.

IIRC I changed it so that the $ldap object gets a useSchema() method, which
takes a Net::LDAP::Schema argument. When this is used, the new value API
gets switched in.

The new value API is roughly this:

Net::LDAP::Entry->get() returns an instance of Net::LDAP::Attribute.
Net::LDAP::Attribute->type() returns the attribute type (name)
Net::LDAP::Attribute->values() returns an array of Net::LDAP::Value objects.
Net::LDAP::Value->string() returns undef for an attribute which is not
human-readable, or the string if it is
Net::LDAP::Value->octets() always returns the raw bytes received from the
server
Net::LDAP::Value->description() returns the AttributeDescription eg "binary"

It's all fairly logical IMO, but it involves several extra method calls
when accessing values which could be a bad thing from a performance point
of view.

There about a million (slight exaggeration, actually 116 :-) subclasses of
Net::LDAP::Value implementing syntax handlers for all the known syntaxes.
These syntax handlers can do things like 'explode' their values into
pieces, which is useful for values of DN syntax for instance. They also
know about values with "binary" AttributeDescriptions.

Is it worth persevering with these schema changes? It provides you with
your desired semantics in a clean way, and it doesn't lose the current
means of accessing the 'raw' data, which I find an attractive feature of
Net::LDAP. (Though it does this with a different interface, natch.)

I've got bogged down in the syntax handlers, incidentally. They're
seriously boring to write and there are a lot of them.

Cheers,

Chris