Forums » Ruby » Re: Net::LDAP 0.0.1

Greetings,

What is the difference between this LDAP package and the one currently 
maintained by Ian
Macdonald:

http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/ruby-ldap/

More specifically, is there an obvious reason to use your ldap package 
as opposed to the already
existing one?

Thanks,
Steven

This package is a pure Ruby implementation, with no dependencies on 
native
code libraries, which can sometimes be problematic. Additionally, an 
attempt
was made to simplify the programming interface and make it more 
Ruby-esque.
Third, this library exposes classes for the LDAP wire protocol as well 
as
BER and LDIF handling that can be used independently, such as for an 
LDAP
server implementation. Finally, we expect this library to be actively
maintained for the foreseeable future.

On 5/1/06, Steven A Hansen <runner@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> What is the difference between this LDAP package and the one currently maintained by Ian
> Macdonald:
>
> http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/ruby-ldap/
>
> More specifically, is there an obvious reason to use your ldap package as opposed to the already
> existing one?
>

The existing one is a C extension, and up until very recently did not
build cleanly on Windows.
This one is pure Ruby, and doesn't require OpenLDAP, Microsoft
Platform SDK, etc.
Also, this one seems to have much better documentation.  Good luck
figuring out what the differences between the various search() methods
are in the C-based libraries.