Pb with case sensitivity for attributes

• Key: DIRSERVER-334
• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Blocker
• Assignee: Alex Karasulu
• Reporter: Emmanuel Lecharny

Description

There is a huge problem with attributes. They are supposed to be case insensitive (RFC 2251, par. 2.5.1: "... they must be IA5 (ASCII) strings, and they are case insensitive (e.g. "[e-mail]" will match "[e-mail]")")

If we use the BasicAttribute class (javax.naming.directory.BasicAttribute) without lowercasing the attribute's name, there is no way to guarantee that we could do a attributes.get( <name>.toLowerCase() ) with a correct response.

This usage is spreaded all over the code and need to be fixed.

As an example, here is a snapshot of a working code :

        /*
         * create objectClass=top, objectClass=organizationalUnit
         */
        Attributes attributes = new BasicAttributes();
        Attribute attribute = new BasicAttribute( "objectClass".toLowerCase() ); // we MUST lowercase the attribute's name
        attribute.add( "top" );
        attribute.add( "organizationalUnit" );
        attributes.put( attribute );
        
        Attribute attr = attributes.get("objectclass".toLowerCase());
        Attribute attr2 = attributes.get("objectClass".toLowerCase());
        Assert.assertTrue( attr == attr2 ); // no problem, they are equal.

        /*
         * The same piece of code, without the lowerCase()
         */
        Attributes attributes = new BasicAttributes();
        Attribute attribute = new BasicAttribute( "objectClass");
        attribute.add( "top" );
        attribute.add( "organizationalUnit" );
        attributes.put( attribute );
        
        Attribute attr = attributes.get("objectclass");
        Attribute attr2 = attributes.get("objectClass");
        Assert.assertTrue( attr == attr2 ); // they are different, as attr is null.