python-ldap-dev

Some questions (status,SSL,Unicode)

[Jacek K. <ja...@bn...>]

Hi,

I am new to the list. I have some questions about python-ldap. I have
not found answers for them in the archives, so I am asking here...

1. Is the project alive? The mailing list and CVS logs make me think it
is dead :-(

2. What about SSL/TLS/STARTTLS support? I realy need encrypted
connection to LDAP server.

3. What about Unicode? All strings with non-ascii characters are
encoded as Unicode in a directory and returned as UTF-8 from LDAP
search. It seems reasonable to store them as Unicode objects in python,
but It would require python-ldap to know some details about schema.
I think python-ldap should be just simple interface to LDAP, and the
application should be responsible for interpreting the results.

I am currently working on LDAP browser with curses interface. I need
such thing for managing users and such on my servers.
To make the browser (I want to use python for that) I need
python bindings to LDAP. So I use python-ldap (ver. 1.10alpha3-1).

If it is necessery I can help with developing python-ldap, as it is very
important to me. I am using Linux with openldap-2.0.18, so I could test
it only on this platform.

BTW. My browser is working now, but only supports anonymous browsing of
LDAP directory and has no editing capabilities.

Greets,
	Jacek

Re: Some questions (status,SSL,Unicode)

[Michael <mi...@st...>]

Jacek Konieczny wrote:
> 
> 1. Is the project alive?

See item 1 on http://python-ldap.sourceforge.net/faq.shtml ;-).

> 2. What about SSL/TLS/STARTTLS support? I realy need encrypted
> connection to LDAP server.

Patches for using StartTLS were provided but not landed in CVS yet.
Also the implementation was somewhat incomplete since it lacks
support for setting up a local SSL context (trusted root CA certs,
CRL handling etc.).

> 3. What about Unicode? All strings with non-ascii characters are
> encoded as Unicode in a directory and returned as UTF-8 from LDAP
> search. It seems reasonable to store them as Unicode objects in python,
> but It would require python-ldap to know some details about schema.
> I think python-ldap should be just simple interface to LDAP, and the
> application should be responsible for interpreting the results.

Yes. The low-level C wrapper module in python-ldap should not handle
Unicode objects. It should pass strings not knowing if these are
text strings or binary blobs.

> If it is necessery I can help with developing python-ldap, as it is very
> important to me.

You're welcome to help.

> I am using Linux with openldap-2.0.18, so I could test
> it only on this platform.

There are various public LDAP servers.

> BTW. My browser is working now, but only supports anonymous browsing of
> LDAP directory and has no editing capabilities.

You might wanna check out
http://python-ldap.sourceforge.net/apps.shtml to learn more about
what login and editing capabilities mean by looking at existing
code.

Ciao, Michael.