Re: ldap_result2error, ldap_parse_result

[mcs@netscape.com (Mark C Smith)]

First, new applications should avoid ldap_result2error() entirely.  For
maximum compatibility with older applications that do call
ldap_result2error(), I agree with you that it is probably better for
implementations of ldap_result2error() to not return the
LDAP_MORE_RESULTS_TO_RETURN error code.  But these kinds of mappings are
always tricky where the two "interfaces" don't match up very well.  Note
that if ldap_result2error() does not return LDAP_MORE_RESULTS_TO_RETURN,
the information that additional results are present is lost... but an
older client is unlikely to know what to do with that information
anyway.

-- 
Mark Smith
iPlanet Directory Architect / Sun-Netscape Alliance
My words are my own, not my employer's.   Got LDAP?


Howard Chu wrote:
> 
> I came upon an ambiguous situation regarding the difference between the v2
> and v3 LDAP C APIs as implemented in OpenLDAP. I know ldap_result2error is
> provided for backward compatibility with v2 clients - that's fine. However,
> the implementations that I've seen (looking at OpenLDAP and Mozilla SDK)
> have a slight problem that I'd like help resolving.
> 
> Here's the Mozilla ldap_result2error, which is a wrapper for
> ldap_parse_result:
> 
>         lderr_parse = ldap_parse_result( ld, r, &lderr, NULL, NULL, NULL,
>             NULL, freeit );
> 
>         if ( lderr_parse != LDAP_SUCCESS ) {
>                 return( lderr_parse );
>         }
> 
>         return( lderr );
> 
> The strategy is "if the parse failed, return the failure code, otherwise
> return the server's result code." That makes sense, for the most part.
> However, if the parse returns LDAP_MORE_RESULTS_TO_RETURN, then this will be
> returned to the caller instead of the server's result code. I believe this
> is wrong for a number of reasons:
>    The RFC 1823 description of ldap_result2error says that it returns a
> result indicating the outcome of the operation. The RFC also explicitly
> lists all the possible result codes. The LDAP_MORE_RESULTS_TO_RETURN result
> does *not* indicate a parsing failure, the parse was actually successful; it
> does not relate to the outcome of the given operation, and it is not a value
> a client would expect to get back from ldap_result2error.
> 
> The question is what is the correct result to return - I believe in the case
> where ldap_parse_result returns LDAP_MORE_RESULTS_TO_RETURN,
> ldap_result_error should be returning the server error code, not the parse
> result code.
> 
> Comments?