Deprecate ldap_connect with host and port as separate arguments

Hey Folks.

I think it would be a good idea to deprecate calling ldap_connect with 2
parameters host and port.

Wait: What?

Currently there are three ways one can call ldap_connect.

1. With a string $ldap_uri
2. With a string $host and an int $port,
3. With even more parameters for those that did compile PHP with OracleLDAP.

The 3rd way of calling it is not even documented in the docs as it is a
very niche edge-case that would only confuse most people.

The 2nd way of calling the function is based on the since some years
deprecated underlying ldap_open function. Internally we already moved to
the underlying ldap_initialize-function that requires passing an
LDAP-URI. For that we are already converting the passed host and port
into an LDAP-URI of the form 'ldap://$host:$port'.

This already illustrates one of the issues that this way of calling the
function implies: It is not possible to use ldaps as a schema using that
way of calling ldap_connect as it will always use ldap as schema. No
matter which port is passed.

A second reason why I think we should deprecate calling ldap_connect
with two parameters is, that it does not allow one to pass multiple
ldap-servers as it is possible using the LDAP-URI.

This is for sure a BC-break but in my opinion a rather small one as
there are not many users actually using it and there is a clear and easy
migration path for those that use it: Instead of calling

ldap_connect($host, $port)

one calls

ldap_connect("ldap://$host:$port??369")

Also most of the users should not be affected at all as they are using
3rd party libraries that are already only using an LDAP-URI when calling
ldap_connect like Laminas\Ldap or Symfony\Ldap

The documentation at https://www.php.net/ldap_connect also explicitly
states (for some time by now) that using host and port is considered
deprecated.

Named parameters btw also only support ldap_connect(uri:
'ldap://example.com') and ldap_connect(host:'example.com', port:369)
will throw an error.

There already is a PR open[1] that implements the deprecation so that
for the upcoming PHP8 releases each call to ldap_connect with 2
parameters would emit a deprecation message so that people have enough
time to adapt their code before we can actually remove using two
parameters in the next major release.

Thanks for your comments.

Cheers

Andreas

[1] https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/5177

This would require an RFC, obviously, but it seems reasonable to me. "Variable meaning parameters" was always a bad idea, and cleaning them up is a good idea.

--Larry Garfield

--

To unsubscribe, visit: https://www.php.net/unsub.php

I disagree that this needs an RFC. The docs have long-said it's
deprecated; adding a deprecation message in code to match shouldn't
require an RFC.

Le vendredi 27 janvier 2023, 10:00:35 CET Andreas Heigl a écrit :

Hey Folks.

I think it would be a good idea to deprecate calling ldap_connect with 2
parameters host and port.

Hello,

My long term plan was to replace it by a constructor for the new
\LDAP\Connection class that only accepts the URI syntax. Which would also
be better because ldap_connect is a really confusing name as it does not
actually connect to anything.

But I’m unfamiliar with how to write object methods into PHP modules, and
I do not have much time to allocate to php-ldap.

If you are interested into working on some OO methods for php-ldap
classes, I have a ton of ideas on how to make it awesome.

Côme

Please let me know and I can spend some time on it.
I also think working with objects was made significantly easier now that we
have proper stubs and derive a lot of code generation from it.

Best regards,

George P. Banyard