300892 - Ability to retrieve full list from LDAP by default when choosing an LDAP server

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Raoul Nakhmanson-Kulish]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.7.9) Gecko/20050712
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.7.9) Gecko/20050712

In corporate environment users often need to retrieve full list of contacts from
corporate LDAP server. Now they are forced to enter "@" on search field. It
would be cool to give them ability to view full list directly after choosing
LDAP server in "Select Address" window or in Address Book.

Same feature would be cool for Application Suite.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[rabbitambulance]

This ought to already work via the "default query" thing (at least that's how I understand it), but that seems to be broken. Definetely important IMHO, but I think this is less of an enh but at least minor.

Comment 2

[Harvey Wamboldt]

I have an intermittent and very slow LDAP connection. 
The way LDAP addresses are handled exacerbates my 
problems. I would like Thunderbird to cache my LDAP 
address book. On the first LDAP search (after starting 
Thunderbird) I would like Thunderbird to renew the cache 
of all addresses.  Then when I select the LDAP address 
book, Thunderbird would immediately display the cached 
addresses. I could then scroll to the address I want and 
select it.  If I enter a search pattern, then 
Thunderbird should filter the display of cached addresses, 
run an LDAP query in the background (the current 
behaviour) and update the cache with any new addresses 
found.  If the query fails, I would still have the cached
addresses available.

It should be possible to turn this behaviour (caching)
on and off with a checkbox on the Directory Server
Properties dialog box.

Comment 3

[Raoul Nakhmanson-Kulish]

Harvey, I agree with you but LDAP caching seems to be a separate issue.

See bug 126449, if it isn't what you want, fill a new bug.

Comment 4

[denis]

The extension "Contacts Sidebar"  makes it possible to see full list from LDAP by default, so i think that it should be possible to integrate it by defaut in thunderbird ....

http://jpeters.no-ip.com/extensions/?page=tb_cs

Comment 6

[Dmitry]

I vote, that there should be quite simple and natural possibility to display all ldap entries by entering a star (*) into filter or just pressing enter.

Comment 7

[Alex]

"Contacts Sidebar" is obsolete and not maintained anymore.
TB seems to be the only client that does not support showing, and selecting from, the whole address book.