Processing Internal Operations
When writing extensions to operate within the server, it is often necessary to be
able to process operations in the server in order to perform queries and/or make
updates. Although you could use LDAP to establish connections and process
operations like any other client, this is both problematic and inefficient. A
much better approach to the problem is to perform internal operations. Using
internal operations within extensions offers a number of benefits over invoking
external operations, including:
-
There is no need to know the address of the server, what port it is using,
how to authenticate, whether to use a secure connection, etc. You can easily
obtain an internal connection authenticated as either an internal root user or
as any specified user.
-
Internal operations are more efficient because there is no network transfer or
protocol handling, and there is no go through the work queue or have the
request handed off between threads.
-
Internal operations may be used to perform updates that are not allowed for
external clients. For example, internal operations may be used to write to
attributes marked "NO‑USER‑MODIFICATION" (although great care
should be taken when doing so to ensure that you will not interfere with the
normal operation of the server).
Processing internal operations in the UnboundID Server SDK is basically the same
as processing external operations using the UnboundID LDAP SDK for Java. Instead
of creating an external LDAP connection, it is necessary to obtain an
InternalConnection object. The InternalConnection class
provides most of the same methods as LDAPConnection (and implements
the same LDAPInterface interface), so if you are familiar with using
the LDAP SDK then you should be comfortable using this mechanism for processing
internal operations in the server.
There are a few ways to obtain an InternalConnection object. If your
extension is invoked during the course of processing an operation (e.g., as a
plugin), then you can use the
OperationContext.getInternalUserConnection method in order to obtain
an internal connection authenticated as the user that requested the operation, or
you can use OperationContext.getInternalRootConnection method to
obtain a connection authenticated as an internal root user that will be exempt
from access control restrictions. In all other cases, you can use the
ServerContext.getInternalRootConnection method to obtain an internal
root connection, or the ServerContext.getInternalConnection method to
obtain an internal connection authenticated as any specified user.
Note that there is no need to close an internal connection when it is no longer
needed because it does not consume any resources within the server. You may
simply stop using an internal connection and allow it to be garbage collected when
it is no longer needed.
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