I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon creating a new web interface for our LDAP-based address-book.

Unfortunately ldap-abook turned out to be highly inadequate. I could have stomached the convoluted code, but the lack of consistent UTF-8 support was too much to bear.

I used a combination of jTalk, and the Simya LDAP Tag Library to build a new web application. I did have to make a few modifications to the Simya library as it did not integrate well with other tag libraries.

A warning to JSP Tag Library developers:

Avoid using getParent() in sub-container tags, unless you want to prevent other tags from accessing your output data. You should use findAncestorWithClass() instead.

I don't know if Simya is still actively supporting the library, but I'll talk to them about it.