Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 19. Lightweight Directory Access with Net::LDAP

LDAP was designed as a client/server protocol to provide quick and simple access to entries that live in a directory. Initially, LDAP was designed to provide a better interface to X.500 directory services, but its ease of implementation and IETF-based change control means that LDAP has carved its own niche as a directory service.

What is a directory service? In short, the directory is where you store an entry. Each entry implements information about an object. Entries have attributes with a type and at least one value. These attributes have a strict syntax that determines the types of values allowed for the attributes. Such attribute syntaxes include strings, JPEG photographs, and URLs.

If you’ve ever tried to solve a complex problem in a heterogenous computing environment, such as syncing user accounts between different computing platforms, managing a company-wide address book, or building a public-key infrastructure, you might be interested in what LDAP has to offer.

While the IETF governs changes to the LDAP spec, you are not limited to a single source for the availability of an LDAP server. Companies such as iPlanet, Novell, and Microsoft sell commercial LDAP implementations, and you’ll also find a good, free LDAP implemenation in OpenLDAP (http://www.openldap.org).

Net::LDAP implements the LDAP API for Perl programs. You can use Net::LDAP to search or modify the contents of your LDAP directory. In other words, Net::LDAP does ...