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Bug 324203 - How to have LDAP records displayed without searching for?
How to have LDAP records displayed without searching for?
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Contacts
unspecified
Other other
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: evolution-addressbook-maintainers
Evolution QA team
: 435763 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2005-12-15 18:42 UTC by Frank Altpeter
Modified: 2008-08-18 08:55 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.11/2.12


Attachments
proposed eds patch (2.85 KB, patch)
2008-07-28 15:49 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review
proposed evo patch (5.40 KB, patch)
2008-07-28 15:50 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review
proposed eds patch (for GAL browsing) (4.51 KB, patch)
2008-08-12 11:21 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review
proposed eex patch (for GAL browsing) (4.75 KB, patch)
2008-08-12 11:24 UTC, Milan Crha
committed Details | Review

Description Frank Altpeter 2005-12-15 18:42:54 UTC
Distribution: Unknown
Package: Evolution
Severity: enhancement
Version: GNOME2.12.1 unspecified
Gnome-Distributor: FreeBSD GNOME Project
Synopsis: How to have LDAP records displayed without searching for?
Bugzilla-Product: Evolution
Bugzilla-Component: Contacts [was: Addressbook]
Bugzilla-Version: unspecified
Description:
Please describe your feature request:

I was a bit wondering how to do this:
When i add contacts in the local address book, they get all shown when i
select the local addressbook. That's good and i think it's kinda
default.
When i add some contacts to a newly created ldap addressbook, everytime
i reopen evolution contacts and select the ldap addressbook, i get an
empty page. Listing of all entries is only archived when i search for "
" in any field.

Is there a way to have all available records shown within an ldap
addressbook as well? Do i have to do some modifications to the ldap
server or is it an evolution thing?




------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@gnome.bugs 2005-12-15 18:42 UTC -------

Comment 1 Sushma Rai 2005-12-16 04:50:47 UTC
This is an Evolution feature. 
Evolution does not load the address book during startup,
Becuse usually LDAP address books will be enterprose wide books
and will be huge and also always getting *all* at once is not 
possible in case of huge data (ldap limitation).
Comment 2 Daniel Sanders 2006-02-13 20:11:40 UTC
It makes sense to avoid loading the entirety of the addressbook, but it is very confusing for the user to see no entries in the list. It had me convinced that something was wrong with my setup until I tried searching out of desparation.

I see a few solutions to this:
1) Change the displayed message from 'There are no items to show in this view' to something along the lines of 'Please perform a search to find contacts'.
Also allowing empty searches would be a bit more obvious to the user than searching for a space character.

2) Provide an option to load the addressbook at startup. That way those who know their address book is relatively small could see the whole address book.

3) Not sure if LDAP has any way of doing this but if it does then the server could be queried for the size of the addressbook and then smaller addressbooks could be loaded.

I think the first option is probably best, there should be a minimal amount of work involved and it would solve the problem.
Comment 3 Daniel Holbach 2006-12-05 16:11:28 UTC
This was raised in https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/evolution/+bug/70026 also.
Comment 4 Gilles Dartiguelongue 2007-01-27 09:41:31 UTC
I've looked at thunderbird behavoir and it starts downloading contacts from the ldap when you select the ldap addressbook. 

Maybe the simplest change would be to have the view saying "please search for something" and add a button allowing a search with just the objectClass to get as much results as possible (or at most the number of results set in ldap properties).

Anyway I have to look at the code to see how the cache performs. It would be simple to get all results, ask the server for a delta since last check and display the cache to the user.
Comment 5 DoomHammerNG 2007-02-20 22:14:02 UTC
Agree. Adress Book is not only for searching but for browsing also.
Comment 6 Johannes Rohr 2007-03-16 08:42:18 UTC
I strongly support this request. LDAP addressbooks should be browsable just like e.g. MS Exchange addressbooks, which are also on the server.
Comment 7 Milan Crha 2007-05-07 17:42:11 UTC
*** Bug 435763 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Becstra 2007-10-25 15:44:19 UTC
I tried searching for anything, a space, a first name, and get the following error message.  There are, at most, 75 contacts in our LDAP addressbook.

Unable to perform search.

The backend for this addressbook refused to perform this query.



Any ideas/solutions/suggestions greatly appreciated!!
Comment 9 Stefan Söffing 2007-11-01 22:09:08 UTC
Is there any work done on this? It is really annoying not even to know how many contacts there are. The solution described above seems to be reasonable...

Please take a look at this...
Comment 10 Ross Burton 2007-11-02 07:57:40 UTC
Downloading all contacts isn't an option when the server is on the other side of the country and contains 100000 contacts.  A big label saying that you need to search would be the best option.
Comment 11 Johannes Rohr 2007-11-02 09:11:49 UTC
(In reply to comment #10)
> Downloading all contacts isn't an option when the server is on the other side
> of the country and contains 100000 contacts.  A big label saying that you need
> to search would be the best option.
> 

What about making this configurable per server? I know this isn't the GNOME way, but in this case it seems the only feasible option. 

I use a local LDAP server with just a few hundred entries. I expect it to work just like the local address book. It is annoying that evolution doesn't let me use it the way I want, while kaddressbook does.
Comment 12 Stefan Söffing 2007-11-02 09:57:48 UTC
I completely agree with Johannes. I understand that it is a sane default not to download all contacts. But it should be the users choice to enable this (so there could be an option in the LDAP settings dialog to enable this, maybe together with a label "Only use for small addressbooks").

There's a setting limiting the number of results anyway, so large addressbook will never be downloaded completely.
Comment 13 Gilles Dartiguelongue 2007-11-02 14:12:06 UTC
clearly downloading 100000 contacts at a time is probably not possible since most ldap servers won't send more than a few hundreds results per request anyway.

Anyway, I've found that the ldap backend doesn't provide any kind of local cache of the contacts (in the way the remote calendar does for example) and that's something that would be interesting to fix for remote addressbooks as well. 

Given that ldap can easily get you the updates on the contacts that where changed since the last time you looked at them, with a local cache, you would be able to perform a local search and get only the contacts that were created or modified since the most recent contact in the list has been retrieved (and then get the other from the ldap server). It would certainly at this point result in more complexity added to the code, but just a thought.
Comment 14 dennis 2008-02-24 23:52:40 UTC
I would also appreciate an option to enable the ldap contacts to appear without having to perform a search. I am implementing a shared contacts list of only a few hundred contacts to replace the functionality that is provided by an Exchange public folder. My customer expects the contacts to appear in the same manner as when they click the Personal contacts folder in Evolution or a shared Exchange contacts folder. The current behavior makes the contacts list look broken.
Comment 15 George Farris 2008-02-25 01:48:22 UTC
The current state of browsing LDAP contacts in Evolution is weak.  I understand the greater than 10,000 contact issue, however, many of us are trying to swing people away from Outlook and present a Linux environment.  A vast majority will have less than 200 contacts in their database.  The fact that Evolution does not browse this makes it appear "broken" when compared to the "Personal" contacts, it's inconsistent.

I would like to see this added as a configuration item, when one clicks on an ldap addressbook, Evolution will do a simple search and return all the entries.  A gconf flag would be enough we don't even require a GUI immediately.

Please consider adding this for 2.21 or at the very least provide a patch that those of us could apply.  We really do require this option as many people commenting have pointed out.

Comment 16 Srinivasa Ragavan 2008-02-25 06:03:10 UTC
I just read through the code..

(1) The offline impl is not so well written. It doesn't do a delta or even a timely download (Exchange GAL impl has a timely download). Everytime it seems to download contacts from server to cache.

(2) Always view should be easily done, if the contacts are cache. All the cached contacts can be definitely loaded on to the view. Though the code is not there today.... should be just a copy+paste to get that done.

I really don't have much time on this. George, just saw your mail on e-h list. If you are interested in this, the time-based-caching and view-all-from-cache can be done easily and I can help you complete here.
Comment 17 Holger Heimsch 2008-07-26 15:34:10 UTC
I do understand that it is not always reasonable to browse LDAP directories, depending on the size of them. But I'm sure that there are many LDAP directories out there with less then 1,000 contacts (e.g. home users, small offices). IMO these users would greatly benefit from the option to enable LDAP browsing.

Comment 18 Milan Crha 2008-07-28 15:49:03 UTC
Created attachment 115435 [details] [review]
proposed eds patch

for evolution-data-server;

Workaround patch, until someone finishes it in the better way, as described above with a cache. Or not a workaround patch?
Comment 19 Milan Crha 2008-07-28 15:50:47 UTC
Created attachment 115436 [details] [review]
proposed evo patch

for evolution;

UI part of the patch. Feel free to suggest better strings, I'm really not good in this.
Comment 20 Srinivasa Ragavan 2008-08-07 04:56:18 UTC
Milan, check with Matt or Andre for string. But the patch seems fine for me. Also see if you can port the same patch around Exchange GAL also.
Comment 21 Milan Crha 2008-08-07 12:09:46 UTC
eds part committed to trunk. Committed revision 9295.
evo part committed to trunk. Committed revision 35922.

With respect to EEX Gal, my EEX server is down at the moment, I'll keep this open until the update for Gal will be done.
Comment 22 Milan Crha 2008-08-07 12:11:22 UTC
Oh, I'm sorry for the noise: The evo patch has been slightly modified before the commit, namely other text and added translator's comments.
Comment 23 Matthew Barnes 2008-08-07 13:59:36 UTC
String could some clarfication.  What about:

  - B_rowse this book until reaches limits

  + Allow _browsing until download limit is reached

Still not sure if that's as clear as it could be...
Comment 24 Milan Crha 2008-08-07 14:20:17 UTC
I changed the text in the final commit, after a talk with Andre. It is finally
 * B_rowse this book until limit reached
That yours doesn't sound bad too, but if you look on it in the context (in the dialog itself), then the text makes sense much more. I placed it in the download limits section, just below the time and amount limits.

For the exchange/gal itself, it seems it will require an option for the account, rather than for the gal address book, because of the other options there. The thing is I've such a feeling these GAL options doesn't get to the GAL address book at the moment, probably because of some bug. But, just a feeling (and question for other bug for sure).
Comment 25 André Klapper 2008-08-07 18:53:04 UTC
Will there be a user documentation update?
Comment 26 Milan Crha 2008-08-12 11:21:40 UTC
Created attachment 116413 [details] [review]
proposed eds patch (for GAL browsing) 

for evolution-data-server;

Adds some bits to support GAL browsing on the eds side.
Comment 27 Milan Crha 2008-08-12 11:24:50 UTC
Created attachment 116414 [details] [review]
proposed eex patch (for GAL browsing)

for evolution-exchange;

...and the appropriate changes on the eex side. New string added, I chose something very close to Matt's string this time.
Comment 28 Srinivasa Ragavan 2008-08-18 03:36:28 UTC
Milan, Awesome. Commit to trunk and announce :-)
Comment 29 Suman Manjunath 2008-08-18 05:09:09 UTC
Patch in e-d-s committed to SVN trunk as r9365
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution-data-server?view=revision&revision=9365

Patch in evolution-exchange committed to SVN trunk as 
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution-exchange?view=revision&revision=1748

String/UI change announced to gnome-doc-list and gnome-i18n. 
Comment 30 Milan Crha 2008-08-18 08:55:49 UTC
Closing this...