I'm wondering how to design this: An API to let a request/response LDAP server be configured so a user-defined Python module can handle and/or modify some or all incoming operations, and later the outgoing responses (which are generated by the server). Operations have some common elements, and some which are distinct to the operation type (search, modify, compare, etc). So do responses.
There are also some "operations" used internally by the server - like checking if the current session has access to perform the operation it requested. The server will have various internal classes for operations and data in operations, and methods for the user to access them. One obvious implementation would be to provide a class Operation, let the user define a single subclass of this, and have the server call request_search(), response_search(), request_modify(), check_access() etc in that subclass. Then I suppose the server would turn individual operations into instance of internal subclasses of the user's subclass - class SearchOperation(<user's class>), ModifyOperation(<user's class>) etc. Begins to look a bit messy now. And I'd like to try several methods - first try if the user defined response_search_entry() (one type of Search operation response), then response_search(), then response(), and after that give up. For that one, the Pythonic approach seems to be to define a class hierarchy for these, let the user subclass the subclasses and define request() and response() methods for them, and let Python handle the search for which request() method to use for which operation. And the server must keep track of which subclasses the user defined. This too feels a bit messy to me. Also there are plenty of operation parameters the user might wish to dispatch on, e.g. maybe he can handle Entry but not Referral search responses. I imagine it's more efficient to dispatch in a Python C module than to leave that to the user. But I may be getting too ambitious now. Anyway, ideas? Am I overlooking something obvious? -- Hallvard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
