I'm writing an application that interacts with ldap, and I'm looking for advice on how to handle the connection. Specifically, how to close the ldap connection when the application is done.
I wrote a class to wrap an LDAP connection, similar to this: import ldap import ConfigParser class MyLDAPWrapper(object): def __init__(self): config = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser() config.read('sample.conf') uri = config.get('LDAP', 'uri') user = config.get('LDAP', 'user') password = config.get('LDAP', 'password') self.ldapClient = ldap.initialize(uri) self.ldapClient.simple_bind_s(user, password) My question is this: what is the best way to ensure the ldap connection gets closed when it should? I could write an explicit close() method, but that seems a bit messy; there would end up being lots of calls to close() scattered around in my code (primarily inside exception handlers.) Or I could write a __del__ method: def __del__(self): self.ldapClient.unbind_s() This seems like a much cleaner solution, as I don't ever have to worry about closing the connection; it gets done automatically. I haven't ever used __del__ before. Are there any 'gotchas' I need to worry about? Thanks! -- John Gordon A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs gor...@panix.com B is for Basil, assaulted by bears -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list