Best way to disconnect from ldap?

[John Gordon]

In <jkda88$mrk$1 at reader1.panix.com> John Gordon <gordon at panix.com> writes:

> I'm writing an application that interacts with ldap, and I'm looking
> for advice on how to handle the connection.  Specifically, how to
> close the ldap connection when the application is done.

> I wrote a class to wrap an LDAP connection, similar to this:

>     import ldap
>     import ConfigParser

>     class MyLDAPWrapper(object):

>         def __init__(self):

>             config = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
>             config.read('sample.conf')
>         
>             uri = config.get('LDAP', 'uri')
>             user = config.get('LDAP', 'user')
>             password = config.get('LDAP', 'password')

>             self.ldapClient = ldap.initialize(uri)
>             self.ldapClient.simple_bind_s(user, password)

> My question is this: what is the best way to ensure the ldap connection
> gets closed when it should?  I could write an explicit close() method,
> but that seems a bit messy; there would end up being lots of calls to
> close() scattered around in my code (primarily inside exception handlers.)

> Or I could write a __del__ method:

>         def __del__(self):
>             self.ldapClient.unbind_s()

Thanks everyone for your input.  I learned a lot!

However, I just ran across this bit of documentation on python-ldap.org:

    class ldap.LDAPObject
        Instances of LDAPObject are returned by initialize() and open()
        (deprecated).  The connection is automatically unbound and closed
        when the LDAP object is deleted.

So, given that, do I need to do anything at all?

-- 
John Gordon                   A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs
gordon at panix.com              B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
                                -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"