Re: [Evolution-hackers] LDAP write support (was: Old thoughts on the "self" contact)

[Craig Ringer <craig postnewspapers com au>]

On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 03:06, Chris Toshok wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-02-28 at 03:53, Craig Ringer wrote:
> > On Sun, 2004-02-22 at 08:22, Chris Toshok wrote:
> > 
> > > You can still rm the file/directory, but e-d-s shouldn't allow the
> > > deletion of the calendar/addressbook.  I mean, why would you ever want
> > > to?
> > 
> > If you used contacts stored server-side, such as a read/write LDAP
> > directory. Evolution doesn't support writing to LDAP at present.
> 
> sure it does.  It has for...  almost 4 years.

Indeed. Sure enough, it works a treat. Unfortunately, I've _never_ heard
the feature mentioned, and the documentation explicitly denies it's
existence (at least in 1.4.5 on FC1): 

>From the help menu, under "Getting Started with Ximian Evolution" ->
"Working with your Contacts":
---
5.4. LDAP: Shared Addressbooks on a Network
[...]
You cannot add, delete, or alter cards on the LDAP server. If you need
to change information there, you will need to speak to your system
administrator 
---
Perhaps this could use updating. I saw several bugs in bugzilla reported
by people who didn't realise that LDAP write was supported.

Also, I have noticed one issue with the LDAP writes support that I
thought worth mentioning (though I haven't yet tested with 1.5.x).

When adding a contact to the LDAP directory, if the contact does not
meet the schema requirements (eg no sn for inetOrgPerson because the
contact has only one word in the name), evolution reports the error:
"Error adding card: Other error". If I look at a tcpdump of the
communication with the LDAP server, the LDAP server has reported:
	object class 'person' requires attribute 'sn'
... but evolution does not pass that information on to the user in
either a raw form or a translated form like "Sorry, you need to include
a surname".

Hmm... a bugzilla search turned up these bugs:
http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=45565
covers the issue to some extent, as well as the extremely clear:
http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=31021

so I guess that's covered already. 

This of course, begs the question of how "company" contacts should be
handled, where there may be no "contact person". Think "MyISP Technical
Support". A company name can't really be broken up into first and last
names - especially when it's a one-word name. That aside, I'd consider
it undesirable to see "Network Solutions Inc" come out as "Inc, Network
Solutions" in the address book anyway. I don't have a clue what the
answer to that one is, but thought I'd bring it up as something that'll
probably need addressing sooner or later.

Craig Ringer