'\" te
.TH LDAP_FIRST_MESSAGE 3 "2012/02/29" "OpenLDAP 2.4.30"
.\" $OpenLDAP$
.\" Copyright 1998-2012 The OpenLDAP Foundation All Rights Reserved.
.\" Copying restrictions apply.  See COPYRIGHT/LICENSE.
.SH NAME
ldap_first_message, ldap_next_message, ldap_count_messages \- Stepping through messages in a result chain
.SH LIBRARY
OpenLDAP LDAP (libldap, \-lldap)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.ft B
#include <ldap.h>
.LP
.ft B
int ldap_count_messages( LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *result )
.LP
.ft B
LDAPMessage *ldap_first_message( LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *result )
.LP
.ft B
LDAPMessage *ldap_next_message( LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *message )
.SH DESCRIPTION
.LP
These routines are used to step through the messages in a result chain
received from
.BR ldap_result (3) .
For search operations, the result chain can contain referral, entry
and result messages. The
.BR ldap_msgtype (3)
function can be used to distinguish between the different message types.
.LP
The
.B ldap_first_message()
routine is used to retrieve the first message in a result chain.
It takes the \fIresult\fP as returned by a call to
.BR ldap_result (3) ,
.BR ldap_search_s (3)
or
.BR ldap_search_st (3)
and returns a pointer to the first message in the result chain.
.LP
This pointer should be supplied on a subsequent call to
.B ldap_next_message()
to get the next message, the result of which should be
supplied to the next call to
.BR ldap_next_message() ,
etc.
.B ldap_next_message()
will return NULL when there are no more messages.
.LP
These functions are useful when using routines like
.BR ldap_parse_result (3)
that only operate on the first result in the chain.
.LP
A count of the number of messages in the result chain can be obtained
by calling
.BR ldap_count_messages() .
It can also be used to count the number of remaining messages in a chain
if called with a message, entry or reference returned by
.B ldap_first_message() ,
.B ldap_next_message() ,
.BR ldap_first_entry (3) ,
.BR ldap_next_entry (3) ,
.BR ldap_first_reference (3) ,
.BR ldap_next_reference (3) .
.SH ERRORS
If an error occurs in
.B ldap_first_message()
or
.BR ldap_next_message() ,
NULL is returned.  If an error occurs in
.BR ldap_count_messages() ,
-1 is returned.

.\" Oracle has added the ARC stability level to this manual page
.SH ATTRIBUTES
See
.BR attributes (5)
for descriptions of the following attributes:
.sp
.TS
box;
cbp-1 | cbp-1
l | l .
ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE 
=
Availability	library/openldap
=
Stability	Committed
.TE 
.PP
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR ldap (3),
.BR ldap_search (3),
.BR ldap_result (3),
.BR ldap_parse_result (3),
.BR ldap_first_entry (3),
.BR ldap_first_reference (3)
.SH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
.\" Shared Project Acknowledgement Text
.B "OpenLDAP Software"
is developed and maintained by The OpenLDAP Project <http://www.openldap.org/>.
.B "OpenLDAP Software"
is derived from University of Michigan LDAP 3.3 Release.  


.SH NOTES

.\" Oracle has added source availability information to this manual page
This software was built from source available at https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland.  The original community source was downloaded from  ftp://ftp.openldap.org/pub/OpenLDAP/openldap-release/openldap-2.4.30.tgz

Further information about this software can be found on the open source community website at http://www.openldap.org/.