On Thursday 05 April 2007 09:15:18 Andrew Yager wrote: > I'm starting to work on the LDAP framework again with a fair amount > of seriousness. There seems to be several options for how this could > work, so I thought I would ask for a more general consensus as to the > approach people would like to take.
I think this is a very important component so I support the work and I gladly test and probably even contribute to it. I have needs for LDAP and Active Directory, as they are almost the same I think this component should manage AD connections also. Looking at PHP function manual you can see that there's quite a lot of confusion how to connect to AD. This component could resolve those issues by hiding some of the complexities related to AD. > * In the first iteration, I am intending to implement it based on the > LDAP functions built into PHP, but in the longer term feel that it > would be more like the Zend Framework if we fully implemented our own > protocol client. I don't feel as though I have the technical > expertise to do this. Do other people feel this is necessary to look > at doing, and if so, does someone feel like (once we have a stable > API) that they may be able to assist in this manner? I really have no opinion for this other than it's not something that should be looked at now. Later when the Framework has matured it could be an option. > * Different people have suggested different methods for accessing > LDAP programatically. Some people feel that an interface like Zend DB > would be the best method, but other people feel that an XML style > interface would be better. Personally, I think that XML is the only > workable model due to the tree nature of LDAP. Does anyone have any > experience with programatically accessing LDAP from an object > oriented framework? With the exception of the Python and .Net > interfaces, most seem to be flat rather than OO. Either way, there > doesn't seem to be a standard set of functionality that people are > using or expect. I'm not quite sure if I understand what you mean with comparison of XML and DB. Example below is something that I had in mind $bind->ou['level 1']->ou['level 2']->uid['teemu']->cn = 'Jumbo Jet'. > * Many people have commented to me both on and off list that they are > interested in using LDAP in their applications. I'm curious to know > what kind of information people are hoping to access from their > directories, and in what ways people are intending to interface with > LDAP. It's so versatile, you could pretty much do anything, but my > use is probably only one hundredth of it's possible functionality. It > will be very helpful to see how other people may wish to use it to > make sure that in thinking about things I don't miss anything > particularly major. I'm accessing AD to query OU's, users, user groups and probably even enable uploading binary data. I have function to strip useless data and to reformat the LDAP result into a nice array. Instead of an array I'd go for an object. > The proposal is currently at http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ > ZFPROP/Zend_Ldap and will be updated as the component gets developed. > It's my intention to be working on a working prototype as this > happens, and I will publish a URL to the code as I start working. If > anyone is interested in collaborating with myself and Shawn, please > contact me to let me know! My application depends on LDAP/AD so this interests me a lot :) > Thanks in advance, > Andrew -- Teemu Välimäki
