ldb error codes

[Simo Sorce]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 11:58 +1100, tridge at samba.org wrote:
> Simo (and other interested parties),
> 
> I've just been discussing ldb error codes a bit with Andrew
> Bartlett and wanted to get your opinion on how to fix it. 
> 
> As you know, the current situation is a bit of a mess. When I first
> wrote ldb I screwed up by paying very little attention to error
> codes. We were able to recover OK for most ldb calls, as we just
> defined the return value as being a LDB_ERR* value, or LDB_SUCCESS. We
> still haven't fixed all the places that need to set these values, but
> at least the major ones are fixed.
> 
> The tricky one is ldb_search(). In the ldap API equivalent
> ldap_search_s() returns an error code and then uses functions like
> ldap_count_messages() to count the replies.  Our ldb_search() function
> returns a message count directly, which leaves no room for an error
> code.
> 
> So I have a few possible proposals for fixing this:
> 
>  1) change the sign of the LDB_ERR* values, and make all functions
>     then return a ldb error value. For ldb_search() if the value is >=
>     0 then its a search count, if its < 0 then its an error code. Not
>     pretty, but requires very little code modification.
> 
>  2) change ldb_search() to only return a error code, and add a
>     ldb_count_messages() function. This requires changing all existing
>     calls to ldb_search(). We'd also have to ensure that all backends
>     NULL terminate the result list, as otherwise ldb_count_messages()
>     would not be possible to implemenet.
> 
>  3) we could have a ldb_errorcode() function that returns the last
>     error code. 
> 
> I know you are also working towards the new ldb_request() API, and
> that won't have this problem, but I think we should also keep the
> current API working, which means we need to fix this anyway.
> 
> Do you have a preference? Metze and Andrew, any comments?

Hi tridge,
There's a 4th option I like to explore, change the return value of
ldb_search into a structure, and have both error code and count hanging
on this structure.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce    -  idra at samba.org
Samba Team    -  http://www.samba.org
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