Fellow LDAPers,
I have dozens of Net::LDAP, Entry, LDIF, Schema etc based scripts (Open Source
rocks!).
However, I keep finding myself in the same situation wishing I had a more
dynamic approach towards handling multi-valued attributes.
I suppose I could ALWAYS use array references even for attrs that I know are
single valued: ie "$rarray = $entr->get_value->($some_specific_attr, asref =>
1)".
Where the "{asref => 1}" option forces an array ref for the returned value even
if its only single valued.
But then I really don't want to deal with $$rarray[0], or if (scalar @$array ==
1) etc??
A little bit poking around the Net::LDAP::Schema seems to indicate that
if (! exists $schema->attribute->('some_specifc_attr')->{single-value}) {
# it's multi-valued - ie; the 'single-value' is set to '1' but I don't see
any set to zero, rather the key just doesn't exist if its multi-valued.
else
#its single valued.
But the schema is really big and I'd have to somehow cache/stash the small
parts of this monster that I'd need throughout the lifetime of the script;-)
Today I typically have static constants files that are like:
our @multi_value_attrs = qw[mail, memberof, etc] and check this every time I
fetch or process attributes.
if (some_specific_attr in @multi_value_attrs) {
@answers = $entr->get_value('some_specific_attr'); #array
} else {
$answer = $entr->get_value('some_specific_attr'); #scalar
}
Its very inelegant...
I see many posts out there explaining the whole "fetch multi-valued attributes
as an array and single valued attributes as scalars" but no simple way of
knowing dynamically which to expect.
Does anyone have an inexpensive function like:
$entr->is_multi_valued('some_specific_attr')?
Or maybe it's just my approach that is flawed?
Thanks all!
--Dan
