[PATCH] samba-tool: Easily edit a users object in AD

[Alexander Bokovoy]

On ti, 27 kesä 2017, Rowland Penny via samba-technical wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 17:57:10 +0300
> Alexander Bokovoy <ab at samba.org> wrote:
> 
> > On ti, 27 kesä 2017, Rowland Penny via samba-technical wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > >     "sAMAccountType=%d"... % (dsdb.UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT,...
> > > > > 
> > > > > 'pydoc samba.dsdb' shows this:
> > > > > 
> > > > >     UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT = 512
> > > > > 
> > > > > This means that the filter will become:
> > > > > 
> > > > > sAMAccountType=512
> > > > > 
> > > > > Don't think that is a valid number for sAMAccountType, it is for
> > > > > userAccountControl though.
> > > > > 
> > > > > My way seems to be the accepted filter to just get a user.
> > > > It is samba.dsdb.ATYPE_NORMAL_ACCOUNT, not UF_NORMAL_ACCOUNT.
> > > > Please use this one.
> > > 
> > > I knew it wasn't correct, but for the ignorant (i.e. me), why use
> > > 'ATYPE_NORMAL_ACCOUNT' instead of '805306368' ?
> > There are few reasons:
> >  - using symbolic constants is more readable. For me, at least, as I
> >    don't remember all constants by heart.
> 
> Valid reason, I usually have to look things like this up.
> 
> >  - using symbolic constants avoids subtle typo issues. Errors in
> > typing are not unknown.
> 
> Really understand this, I could be the king of typo's, never mind
> incorrectly spelt words, I can completely miss out entire words ;-)
> 
> > 
> > We have few more places in the Python code that refer to a normal
> > account type by its numeric value. Using constants helps to reduce
> > likeability of an error that would be very hard to spot otherwise.
> 
> Sorry, but I had to read that last sentence several times before I
> understood it. I think you meant 'Using constants helps to increase the
> likelihood of seeing hard to spot errors.'. If this the case, then I
> totally agree with you ;-)
:) If you do a typo and use 805306360 instead of 805306368, it will be
hard to detect as the code would still work. If you'd do a typo in
dsdb.ATYPE_NORMAL_ACCOUNT it would fail with 'unknown variable' which is
easy to see because the code execution will break. That was my point.

-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy