# Reimplementation address book program **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [January 2, 2009, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784 "2009-01-02T21:02:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/1 "2009-01-02T21:02:45Z")
On one of my servers (linux) I have a nice address book over ldap. It is automatically integrated with thunderbird and other programs, but none of them is capable of modifying (or at least easily). Since I want it very simple and error prone I did it myself, but in PHP. It works pretty fine but every time I look to the code I get disgusted and I haven’t still added some necessary features, so given that I want to rewrite it in ruby, I need some hints… I may use rails in the future but I want to start very smoothly, it was implemented in php + smarty, and that’s fine like approach. I only need 2 things: - insert a new record - modify a record from a list Sorting searching etc are not really necessary, and integrity checks should be done with javascript (as it is now). I want to do it as smart and possible, because mainly I want to learn and not less important I want to maintain code that I like… THanks for any hints ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/2 "2009-01-02T21:03:21Z")
I started to do some searches and I find out I can use net/ldap for manipulating data and amrita2 to create the templates. What do you think?? Another thing, what does :: really mean?? Net::LDAP means what? Look in the Net module for the LDAP class?? And why sometimes i find (fake example) String.join, String#join, Net::LDAP ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/3 "2009-01-02T21:04:32Z")
Looks like amrita is dead or almost, I find almost no documentation other than the source code and a readme file. Should I really go for rails? Otherwise what else?? I only need to generate smartly some forms and get the output of them. Rails is not directly usable because my “db” is an ldap tree… ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 8:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/4 "2009-01-03T08:56:08Z")
On 2 Gen, 20:12, andrea [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Looks like amrita is dead or almost, I find almost no documentation > other than the source code and a readme file. > > Should I really go for rails? Otherwise what else?? > I only need to generate smartly some forms and get the output of them. > Rails is not directly usable because my “db” is an ldap tree… Is there anybody out there?? I went to haml finally, which looks really nice. It’s even too much powerful, it tempts me to write everything in one page 😉 ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 12:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/5 "2009-01-03T12:32:03Z")
On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 7:54 AM, andrea [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Is there anybody out there?? It might help if you actually posed a question, or phrased your problem better. I _think_ you are trying to make a web based administration interface to an LDAP directory, but I am not sure. You might get better information on Rails talk, but your core problem is your backend - its an LDAP directory not a database, so your problem might be better served by anything that uses DataMapper, which doesn’t restrict your data sources. Merb might be a better choice, or possibly even Sinatra, which is simpler and might put less barriers in your learning (and works very well with Haml, which you like). regards, Richard. ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/6 "2009-01-04T20:55:32Z")
On 3 Gen, 12:30, Richard C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > data sources. > > Merb might be a better choice, or possibly even Sinatra, which is simpler and > might put less barriers in your learning (and works very well with Haml, which > you like). > > regards, > Richard. Actually there were a few question marks and I thought I explained the problem, but I’ll try again… I need a frontend for the users which enables to modify / add and pretty view entries from an ldap tree. I just wanted some hints about what to use / how should I design it. Couldn’t I just use mod\_ruby instead of any kind of framework? I need a framework to interpret the haml code maybe? Or I could use the Haml::Engine? This is a first attempt of class structure: class Entry @@multiple = [“mobile”, “telephoneNumber”, “mail”] @@long = [“description”] end class Person \< Entry @@attrs = { :attributes =\> [“cn”, “sn”, “o”, “ou”, “mobile”, “telephoneNumber”, “mail”, “description”], :strict =\> [“cn”, “sn”], :dn =\> [“dn”] } def initialize(cn, sn) end end class Factory \< Entry @@attrs = { :attributes =\> [“o”,“telephoneNumber”,“facsimileTelephoneNumber”,“l”,“postalCode”,“street”,“description”], :strict =\> [“o”], :dn =\> [“o”] } def initialize(org) end end Depending on what you’re loooking you get different attributes, it is fine to do this check directly in the haml template? They will be just input boxes or text areas with some strings already in or empty, it’s not so difficult… ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2009, 10:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/7 "2009-01-04T22:10:19Z")
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 1:53 PM, andrea [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Actually there were a few question marks and I thought I explained the > problem, but I’ll try again… > > I need a frontend for the users which enables to modify / add and > pretty view entries from an ldap tree. > I just wanted some hints about what to use / how should I design it. These are hard questions to answer, because they involve many other questions (like, do you require a certain look or user interface, are you adverse to learning a new framework, time constraints, performance, etc.) Rails is pretty heavy duty, but if you plan on learning it anyway and don’t mind a little feature bloat, I suppose it might work for you. > Couldn’t I just use mod\_ruby instead of any kind of framework? > I need a framework to interpret the haml code maybe? Or I could use > the Haml::Engine? Are you stuck with Haml? Maybe take a look at Camping and Markaby if the requirements for the web-based app are not overly rigorous. I haven’t played with the LDAP library yet, so I can’t comment on it. Good luck! Todd ---
**Author:** ![andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c37758/32.png) [@andrea](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andrea)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 11:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reimplementation-address-book-program/156784/8 "2009-01-05T11:15:40Z")
On 4 Gen, 22:08, Todd B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 1:53 PM, andrea [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > These are hard questions to answer, because they involve many other > questions (like, do you require a certain look or user interface, are > you adverse to learning a new framework, time constraints, > performance, etc.) Rails is pretty heavy duty, but if you plan on > learning it anyway and don’t mind a little feature bloat, I suppose it > might work for you. So I think I will go to rails after, but I like to do things gradually when I’m learning something. I’m not in hurry (there’s already an interfacean working even if incomplete) d I’m firstly interested in learning now. > Are you stuck with Haml? Maybe take a look at Camping and Markaby if > the requirements for the web-based app are not overly rigorous. No Haml is really fine, it was just to know if it could work anyway… I think it could, as long as apache calls a ruby file each time and the ruby file renders the template > I haven’t played with the LDAP library yet, so I can’t comment on it. There’s active\_ldap but I don’t get it to work on Leopard and even on ubuntu 8.04, not a big deal net/ldap is just fine for me. I don’t understand why only here on ruby half of my messages are not actually posted even it gives me no errros… I’ll have to remember to write them inside textmate so I can repost them. This is a start point of the classes I need (not many in fact) class Entry attr\_reader :multiple, :long def initialize(ar1, ar2) @multiple = [“mobile”, “telephoneNumber”, “mail”] @long = [“description”] end end class Person \< Entry # they can just be readonly attributes attr\_reader :attrs, :cn, :sn, :fields # inside other there is a hash containing all other fields set def initialize(cn, sn, other) @attrs = { :attributes =\> [“cn”, “sn”, “o”, “ou”, “mobile”, “telephoneNumber”, “mail”, “description”], :strict =\> [“cn”, “sn”], :dn =\> [“dn”] } # super @fields = {:cn =\> cn, :sn =\> sn} other.each\_pair do |key, val| # don’t overwrite already compiled fields if @attrs[:attributes].member?(key) and (not @fields.has\_key? (key)) @fields[key] = val end end end def to\_s pp @fields end end class Factory \< Entry attr\_reader :attrs def initialize(o) @@attrs = { :attributes =\> [“o”,“telephoneNumber”,“facsimileTelephoneNumber”,“l”,“postalCode”,“street”,“description”], :strict =\> [“o”], :dn =\> [“o”] } @o = o end end Then there are some methods that retrieve or updates the informations and some templates to show everything.