119199 - LDAP Address Book does not support multivalued attributes

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[John Marmion]

This bug is a spin off from the discussion on bug #118454. LDAP attributes may
contain multiple values. When LDAP entries are displayed in the Address Book
then this factor is not taken into account and instead only the first value is
displayed.

Comment 1

[Mark Smith [:mcs]]

FYI, I don't think this problem was ever addressed in the Communicator 4.x
addressbook either. A lot of users complained about it though.

A related capability which it sounds like you already have implemented is the
ability to use attr1 if it exists but fall back to attr2, e.g., use displayName
if it exists for the Name field but fall back to cn.

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

mass re-assign.

Comment 3

[Paul Howarth]

It would be very useful if multiple "mail" attributes returned by an LDAP query would be honoured. Currently all but the first are discarded, which renders Thunderbird rather useless with servers where both home and business email addresses are held in the "mail" attribute.

Wouldn't it be possible to treat multiple "mail" attributes the same as multiple returned objects for the search for the addressbook and autocompletion, so that users could choose the address they wanted to use, just as if the "second email address" in a Thunderbird contact entry had been specified?

Comment 4

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

With the current autocomplete implementation, it would be possible to fix this for autocomplete only without having to sort out all the addressbook-related issues first.

Comment 8

[kotodama]

Hi,

I know this is an old issue (10 years) but it's still there.

LDAP handling is buggy (you can't see the contacts until you type "." in the search field, multiple email addresses are not handled correctly), there is no SyncML lib, no ActiveSync lib.

Is there a solution to integrate an external address book into thunderbird ? How are we supposed to use external sources ?

This is not pointless criticism but a real question, because today I'm stuck with non-working or partially working solutions :/

Regards

Comment 9

[Pier-Luc Thériault]

Hi, I am affected by this, and I am gonna try to fix it.

Comment 10

[Pier-Luc Thériault]

Attachment: Bug 119199 - Make it possible to specify an index in the attribute mapping for address book LDAP directories with multi value attributes. r=darktrojan

Example changing ldap_2.servers.default.attrmap.SecondEmail for
mail[1] would take the second mail entry for the SecondEmail

Comment 11

[Pier-Luc Thériault]

Attachment: Bug 119199 - Revert a change needed for an alternative implementation. r=benc

Depends on D99600

Comment 12

[Ben Campbell]

(In reply to Pier-Luc Thériault from comment #11)

Created attachment 9192963 [details]
Bug 119199 - Revert a change needed for an alternative implementation. r=benc

Depends on D99600

I'm so sorry Pier-Luc, but I missed this entirely! (it's only been the last couple of weeks I've started using phab - previously it was all patches attached to the Bugzilla issue).

I don't really understand the address book implications (so I'll foist the review off to darktrojan), but presumably your patch works for you and does what you need, right?

Comment 13

[Pier-Luc Thériault]

Attachment: Bug 119199 - Improvements suggested by darktrojan

Depends on D99600

Comment 14

[Pier-Luc Thériault]

Attachment: Bug 119199 - Fix type issues for map iteration and string

Depends on D114590

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/60400b05b16d
Make it possible to specify an index in the attribute mapping for address book LDAP directories with multi value attributes. r=darktrojan

Comment 16

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/018a45f6e5e9
followup to fix linting. rs=eslint DONTBUILD