server-less operation

[John B. <joh...@ne...>]

Hello folks,

Does anyone see any utility in adding support for Net::LDAP to query a
local LDIF file as opposed to a directory? This would be for testing
purposes, and I think could be made to work like this:

- read-only. All add/modify etc operations fail

- each search operation could simply re-scan all entries in the LDIF file
sequentially and decide if the entry matched the search criteria. Then
either add to the search result and/or fire any callbacks.

Of course, this could be optimised but that isn't really the point.


The point would be that for the (reasonably large?) class of problems
which require read-only LDAP access, you could write and test Net::LDAP
code against an LDIF image of a directory.

Would patches to implement something like this be accepted (or would this
be better as a seperately maintained subclass of Net::LDAP)?

Does anyone see problems in doing this which I have missed [*]?

Or is something like this already implemented and I've not noticed?

regards,

jb


[*] - complications could include:

a - authentication (probably either support simple auth only or always
succeed)

b - starttls [again probably just fake success]

c - I haven't really thought through how complex the 'does this entry
match these search criteria' decision would have to be. Filters can be
complex. Will I need to handle different encodings of DNs and attribute
names?