Re: Suggested Schema changes

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

Graham Barr <gb...@po...> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 07, 2002 at 02:36:34PM +0000, Graham Barr wrote:
>> I think the root of the problems with Schema.pm is that ->item is used as
>> an accessor for all types, and the the internal structures are wrong.
>> Also The methods return names or OIDs, which them must be passed to item
>> to retrieve.
>> 
>> Here is what I propose
>> 
>> Internals
>> 
>>   $schema = {
>>     # OID will be a hashref mapping the OID (number or un-altered name)
>>     to the hash # which holds the elements data
>>     oid => { ... },
>> 
>>     # at will be a hash mapping the lower case version of the names and
>>     aliases # of attributes to the hash for the element
>>     at  => { ... },
>> 
>>     # Same as at for all other types
>>     etc..
>>   };
>> 
>> The API then needs to change.
>> 
>> We do away with ->item and make is_attribute return the element hash.
>> This way we know that the given name/OID should be an attribute or
>> syntaxrule or whatever. If we really want to hide the contents of the
>> element hash, then we should just bless it into another package which
>> contains accessor methods.
>> 
>> So now instead of
>> 
>>   $href = $schema->item('userName');
>>   $syn  = $schema->item('userName','syntax');
>> 
>> you will do
>> 
>>   $href = $schema->is_attribute('userName');
>>   $syn  = $schema->is_attribute('userName')->{syntax};
>> 
>> However, I dont really like the is_ prefix on these methods, but
>> dropping that makes the name too close to existing methods (attributes)
>> which return all attributes, so if anyone has any ideas (or they do not
>> think it will be a problem), then fire away.
> 
> In fact it seems that what I was trying to describe is similar to the
> Java API.
> 
> For those not familiar with it, see
> 
> http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/dirsdk/jsdk41/Reference/index.html
> 
> And look at the LDAPSchema and LDAPSchemaElement class definitions.

Yes, that sounds about right. I'm slightly unhappy with the methods being
called 'is_*' given this usage:

$schema->is_attribute('userName')->{syntax};

I prefer the Netscape method naming style, although it does mean that there
will be different methods with very similar names ('getAttribute' returning
a single definition and 'etAttributes' returning an enumeration).

How about 'attribute' for the single definition, and 'all_attributes' for,
well, all of them?

Cheers,

Chris