Some LDAP Terminology

LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Its a system for accessing a

directory of information in a structured way

DN Distinguished Name. It identifies a specific entry by either a series of RDNs,

or a search string, to locate that particular entry.

RDN Relative Distinguished Name. Basically a portion of a DN. CN Common Name. This is the general purpose name of an entry, and is

usually used as part of the DN for an entry.

DC Domain Component. This is also part of a DN/RDN, and is often used to

define the name of your service/directory/top-level-domain.

directory your collection of entries that you want to access via LDAP (its the D

in LDAP!)
schema the design of your directory. Refers to the hierarchy of entries within

your directory.
top the root level entry of your schema. objectClass a group of attributes, commonly used to describe a particular type

of information. For example the inetOrgPerson objectClass contains a group of attributes for describing a person, with common internet-based communication methods.
attribute a single piece of information belonging to an entry in your directory LDIF LDAP Data Interchange Format. This is a simple, text-based format used to

read/write LDAP entries. It is in attributeName: value format, with one entry per line, so its very easy to read/handle on the command line or via code.

Setting Up an LDAP Server

OpenLDAP is easy to install/configure, and is available via package managers for

most common *NIX OSes. You need to set up your DC correctly in the slapd configuration files so that you have something to connect to. (/etc/openldap/slapd.conf).
Run slapd in debug mode so that you can get some useful information and see

what is and isnt working while youre figuring things out.

Custom objectClass Creation

In our case, we needed some attributes that werent available in any of the objectClasses that were being loaded by OpenLDAP, so we decided to create our own. OpenLDAP was loading the config files for a lot of attributes, but until theyre included in an objectClass, and that objectClass is referenced in your entry, you cant use those attributes. Heres what we came up with: #
objectclass ( 1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 NAME 'vCardPerson' SUP inetOrgPerson STRUCTURAL

MAY ( additionalName $ personalTitle $ honorificSuffix $ bday $ tz $ sourceURI ) )

Basically we just created an objectClass called vCardPerson which inherited everything (SUP) from inetOrgPerson, then added a few optional (MAY) attributes. The 1.1.1.. is a garbage number that we made up. Youre supposed to register and get a unique number to identify every objectClass from IANA, but, well, we were working on an experimental project so we didnt bother #

Working with LDAP via PHP

If you get an error message: Object Class violation, then youre probably trying

to set an attribute which isnt available. You might need to include another objectClass (or define your own) so that you have access to that attribute.
Connecting and Binding to an LDAP server is pretty easy once you have things

set up. You will probably use something similar to this:

$ldap = ldap_connect( 'ldap://ldaphostname.com/' ); if ( $ldap ) { $bind = ldap_bind( $ldap, 'cn=admin,dc=nodomain', 'password' ); if ( !$bind ) { echo 'Failed to connect to LDAP server!'; exit; } }

A DN should probably include a unique identifier to make life easier, ours ended

up looking something like this (where uid changed for each entry):
uid=123,dc=1234,dc=nodomain

Creating an entry (and saving it in LDAP) is as easy as creating an array and then

calling a PHP function. Each of the array elements matches up to an LDAP attribute, and you just need to be sure to include an objectClass entry to define which attributes youre using. Heres an example (assuming youre connected to an LDAP server via $ldap and have defined a new, unique DN via $dn):

$entry = array();

$entry['objectClass']

= array( 'top', 'person', 'organizationalPerson', 'inetOrgPerson',

'hCard' );

$entry['cn'] $entry['sn'] $entry['gn']

= array( 'Billy Bob' ); // Common Name = array( 'Bob' ); // Surname/Family Name = array( 'Billy' ); // Given Name = array( 'BillyBob' ); // Nickname

$entry['displayName'] $entry['mail'] $entry['labeledURI'] $entry['mobile']

= array( 'billy@bob.com' ); // Email = array( 'http://billybob.com' ); = array( '+12345678912' ); // Mobile number

if ( !ldap_add( $ldap, $dn, $entry ) ) { echo ldap_error( $ldap ); } else { echo 'Successfully added entry'; }

Hopefully Ill be able to add to this over time as I learn some more bits and pieces with LDAP. Do you have any good pointers or explanations for how LDAP works? Please add them in the comments! #