[dev] Newbie

[Raphael Melo de Oliveira Bastos Sales]

On 4/24/06, Chuck Hagenbuch <chuck at horde.org> wrote:
> I'm cc:ing the dev list on this mail to keep the whole dev community
> in the loop; I hope you don't mind. I'd prefer conversations to stay
> on list to involve other developers as well if you're comfortable with
> that.

I could have sworn I had sent to the list, not just for you. :) In
fact, I'd like to have the participation of other developers in this.

> > My idea is to make an application to manage the data from an LDAP
> > server and make an API for integration with other Horde applications.
>
> What kind of integration with other Horde apps do you see being
> possible? I certainly see a lot of possibilities if there was an LDAP
> driver layer that could be re-used, but I'm not sure about how other
> Horde apps would make use of an LDAP management app?

I don't know much about each Horde project's needs from a developer's
point of view. So I don't think I'd be able to propose an API that
will be very useful right now.

But, since we have a small head start, I could take the time to ask
the developers of each Horde project if they'd want something out of
LDAP and build the API from the answers. See what they want the most
and start from there.

If we design it properly, current projects and future ones can benefit
from this. How it's going to be implemented is a modelling problem,
that I think we can worry about later. :)

>
> > I'd like to avoid using anything that doesn't come bundled with PHP,
> > so it would ease up the installation process.
>
> Okay. So no Net_LDAP, and you'd be writing some sort of utility layer
> to either go into the framework packages (under/in addition to
> Horde_LDAP) or a library that'd be part of your app?

I'd have to study Horde_LDAP first, see what it can do. After defining
the API, I'd be able to see if I'd need to expand it or not. But I do
feel strongly about not using extensions that don't come bundled with
PHP or Horde, so we can minimize the effort of the installation
process. If we realize during the modelling phase that this is not
practical, then we can consider using Net_LDAP.

>
> > Perhaps on a long term, allow users to manage more complex
> > operations, like permissions and replication servers.
>
> With permissions, it'd be very interesting to see if a Perms_ldap
> backend (to the Horde permissions system) would be possible. There is
> already an LDAP Groups backend.

    This is a great example of what I want to do this at this first
moment, figure out what everyone expects to get from LDAP. I think if
I do a good job at this, the whole thing will go smoothly and we'll
have a great project on our hands. :)

Regards,

Raphael