On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 18:34 +0200, Alexandre Jousset wrote:
I think perhaps you may have a misunderstanding concerning the intent of the LDAP support, at least as LDAP is typically used.
"Typically used", that's the word ;-) See below...
If the reason you want your personal address book information in a central repository such as LDAP is to all lookup's from multiple computers then realize this is already supported by both RoundCube's backing database and the fact it is a web based application, either means of access gives you remote multi-platform access.
My goal was to use RoundCube as a webmail and also allow people, when they are at home / work, to use another client like Thunderbird or Outlook. As they both do not allow to modify LDAP contacts, and as I've seen functions to do that in the file ../program/include/rcube_ldap.inc, I was just wondering if it was possible and / or planned with RC.
You answered me about the future of RC *not* allowing to change contacts in LDAP, and thus the patch may not be welcome. I understand your point.
I am not a RoundCube developer, as such I can't comment on whether this would be a desirable feature in their eyes or not. I think the point I was trying to make was that's it is outside the normal usage model and as a consequence would likely be low on the feature list, perhaps Thomas has input on this topic.
At the moment in the code when you add a contact it is inserted into the database RoundCube is using (e.g. the per user personal address book). At a minimum you would need some logic or some UI to select a different database (e.g. LDAP) and utililize different "database syntax" (LDAP is not SQL).
Creating and modifying LDAP entries is not difficult, I don't expect this would be hard to add. What would be difficult is getting naive users to understand the model once you introduce multiple editable databases. I suspect this is the primary reason you don't see this feature with existing mail clients.
However, I do recognize how valuable it would be to have all mail clients using just one "address book".
It's true that I don't plan to use LDAP as usual, but as you said just (in part) for a central repository for contacts and use ACLs to forbid reading of other users' addresses. This is not for a company but just for my own server where I host some services (mail, web, DNS, etc.) for friends and family ;-)
Yes, ACL's would be the route to go. But just remember this requires specialized setup by the LDAP administrator to support a specific client.
Another issue would be the modifications which would be needed to the LDAP schema, the existing schema's most likely would be inappropriate (because you want the contact information bound to a particular user's address book and not global).
It sounds like you're in the position to do this, but as you say this is not typical.
Well it's not a problem, I'm going to write a web UI to do that on my site :-)
By all means, go for it, perhaps others will find this useful.
Regards,