[dev] Newbie

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Raphael Melo de Oliveira Bastos Sales <raphael.melo21 at gmail.com>:

> 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.

Part of what I'm asking is what sort of services do you envision an  
application providing to the rest of Horde? Take a look at what we  
have as Horde "registry calls" - things like mail/compose, tasks/list,  
etc. You can find the API major name by looking for "provides" entries  
in horde/config/registry.php, and the individual methods by looking in  
application/lib/api.php. Or you can use the SOAP/XML-RPC  
system.listMethods call to explore.

I'm not sure what LDAP-specific services in that sense would look like.

The alternative is a library or framework package, like Horde_LDAP is  
currently, or additional backends for other drivers, like Auth, Prefs,  
DataTree, etc. Vilma is an application that could have extensive LDAP  
backend support. And on and on, really - you could write an LDAP  
backend for Nag (tasks), if that made sense.

But like Ben said, the original idea was an LDAP admin tool. You're  
still welcome to propose whatever you think is an interesting and  
appropriate project, of course.

> 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.

That basically means asking on this list, fwiw. :)

> 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. :)

Something interesting would be if an LDAP backend for RDO is possible.  
RDO is an ORM layer, written utilizing PHP 5 features, that I've been  
working on and tried to design to allow non-SQL backends. But without  
an implementation using something like LDAP or XML, it's just theory.  
That'd be an interesting project, and usable by other applications.

> I'd have to study Horde_LDAP first, see what it can do.

Not a lot - it's just a few utility methods so far.

>     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. :)

Sounds good to me. :)

-chuck

-- 
"we are plastered to the windshield of the bus that is time." - Chris