Re: Dumping Net::LDAP::Entry to a string

can someone remove me from your emails?????? 



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Heiko Jansen" <[email protected]> 
To: [email protected] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 11:32:43 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: Dumping Net::LDAP::Entry to a string 

Am Mittwoch 10 Februar 2010 15:17:25 schrieb Graham Barr: 

> I am in two minds as whether to accept this as a change. As the docs state 
> 
>     This method is intended for debugging purposes and does not treat 
>  binary attributes specially 
> 
>     See Net::LDAP::LDIF on how to generate LDIF output 
> 
> so this really should not be used for passing around entries 

I didn't intend to pass around the stringified entry - but you're right: 
people would quite probably try to use it that way. 
As for not treating binary attributes specially: If dump() could live without, 
I concluded that dumpstr() could do so, either.... 
  
> Also, anything that can dump to a filehandle can dump to a string. 
> 
>   open(my $fh,">",\my $buffer); 
> 
>   then pass $fh as the file handle 

I consider that a not so well known solution. At least I had to look it up 
yesterday - well, given my programming skills that's probably not a sensible 
criterion.... ;-) 

Regarding Christophers reference to it lacking backward compatibility: One 
might use IO::String instead. But that would add another module dependency. 

> Having said that maybe Net::LDAP::Entry could use an ->ldif method 
> 
> something like (untested) 
> 
> sub ldif { 
>   my $self = shift; 
>   require Net::LDAP::LDIF; 
>   open(my $fh, ">", \my $buffer); 
>   my $changes = $self->changes ? 1 : 0; 
>   my $ldif = Net::LDAP::LDIF->new($fh,"w", changes => $changes); 
>   $ldif->write_entry($self); 
>   return $buffer; 
> } 

Well, that works. Output does not look as nicely formatted and readable as the 
original dump() output, but that's certainly an acceptable trade-off for being 
more complete and "correct". Which makes me think that it could be used inside 
dump(), too. 

Heiko