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Introduction

An Open Directory plug-in is a Mac OS X dynamically loaded library that responds to requests for directory service from applications that are clients of Open Directory.

This book describes the runtime environment for Open Directory plug-ins and how to build and configure an Open Directory plug-in. It also describes the entry points that an Open Directory plug-in must provide, the requests that an Open Directory plug-in must be prepared to respond to, and the Open Directory callback routines that the plug-in can call to register and unregister nodes and to write in log files.

Contents:

Organization of This Document
See Also

Organization of This Document

This book contains the following chapters:

• “Runtime Environment” describes how Open Directory plug-ins are loaded.

• “Required Entry Points” defines the required entry points for an Open Directory plug-in

• “Processing Open Directory Requests” defines the requests an Open Directory plug-in must be prepared to handle.

• “Processing Concurrent Requests” explains the asynchronous nature of Open Directory plug-ins

• “Open Directory Callbacks” defines the callback routines provided by Open Directory.

• “Calling Mac OS X Functions” explains the advantages and disadvantages of using Mac OS X functions in an Open Directory plug-in.

• “Managing References” describes how Open Directory plug-ins interact with object references.

• “Standard Record and Attribute Types” explains what information needs to be maintained from record and attribute types.

• “Authentication” defines what authentication methods an Open Directory plug-in needs to support.

• “Property List for an Open Directory Plug-in” explains the keys used in an Open Directory plug-in property list and how those keys are utilized.

• “Configuring an Open Directory Plug-in” describes the variety of configurations for setting up an Open Directory plug-in.

• “Client Side Buffer Parsing” explains how to use a tDataBuffer object in an Open Directory plug-in.

See Also

Refer to the following reference document for Open Directory plug-ins:

• Open Directory Reference

For more information about Open Directory client programming, and administration, see:

• Open Directory Programming Guide

• Mac OS X Server Open Directory Administration

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