Provided by: libmozilla-ldap-perl_1.5.3-2build4_amd64 
NAME
Mozilla::LDAP::Entry.pm - Object class to hold one LDAP entry.
SYNOPSIS
use Mozilla::LDAP::Conn;
use Mozilla::LDAP::Entry;
ABSTRACT
The LDAP::Conn object is used to perform LDAP searches, updates, adds and deletes. All
such functions works on LDAP::Entry objects only. All modifications and additions you'll
do to an LDAP entry, will be done through this object class.
DESCRIPTION
The LDAP::Entry object class is built on top of the Tie::Hash standard object class. This
gives us several powerful features, the main one being to keep track of what is changing
in the LDAP entry. This makes it very easy to write LDAP clients that needs to
update/modify entries, since you'll just do the changes, and this object class will take
care of the rest.
We define local functions for STORE, FETCH, DELETE, EXISTS, FIRSTKEY and NEXTKEY in this
object class, and inherit the rest from the super class. Overloading these specific
functions is how we can keep track of what is changing in the entry, which turns out to be
very convenient. We can also easily "loop" over the attribute types, ignoring internal
data, or deleted attributes.
Most of the methods here either return the requested LDAP value, or a status code. The
status code (either 0 or 1) indicates the failure or success of a certain operation. 0
(False) meaning the operation failed, and a return code of 1 (True) means complete
success.
One thing to remember is that in LDAP, attribute names are case insensitive. All methods
in this class are aware of this, and will convert all attribute name arguments to lower
case before performing any operations. This does not mean that the values are case
insensitive. On the contrary, all values are considered case sensitive by this module,
even if the LDAP server itself treats it as a CIS attribute.
OBJECT CLASS METHODS
The LDAP::Entry class implements many methods you can use to access and modify LDAP
entries. It is strongly recommended that you use this API as much as possible, and avoid
using the internals of the class directly. Failing to do so may actually break the
functionality.
Creating a new entry
To create a completely new entry, use the new method, for instance
$entry = Mozilla::LDAP::Entry->new()
$entry->setDN("uid=leif,ou=people,dc=netscape,dc=com");
$entry->{objectclass} = [ "top", "person", "inetOrgPerson" ];
$entry->addValue("cn", "Leif Hedstrom");
$entry->addValue("sn", "Hedstrom");
$entry->addValue("givenName", "Leif");
$entry->addValue("mail", "leif@netscape.com);
$conn->add($entry);
This is the minimum requirements for an LDAP entry. It must have a DN, and it must have at
least one objectclass. As it turns out, by adding the person and inetOrgPerson classes, we
also must provide some more attributes, like CN and SN. This is because the object classes
have these attributes marked as "required", and we'd get a schema violation without those
values.
In the example above we use both native API methods to add values, and setting an
attribute entire value set directly. Note that the value set is a pointer to an array, and
not the array itself. In the example above, the object classes are set using an anonymous
array, which the API handles properly. It's important to be aware that the attribute value
list is indeed a pointer.
Finally, as you can see there's only only one way to add new LDAP entries, and it's called
add(). It normally takes an LDAP::Entry object instance as argument, but it can also be
called with a regular hash array if so desired.
Adding and removing attributes and values
This is the main functionality of this module. Use these methods to do any modifications
and updates to your LDAP entries.
addValue Add a value to an attribute. If the attribute value already exists, or we
couldn't add the value for any other reason, we'll return FALSE (0),
otherwise we return TRUE (1). The first two arguments are the attribute name,
and the value to add.
The optional third argument is a flag, indicating that we want to add the
attribute without checking for duplicates. This is useful if you know the
values are unique already, or if you perhaps want to allow duplicates for a
particular attribute. The fourth argument (again optional) is a flag
indicating that we want to perform DN normalization on the attribute. The
final, fifth, optional argument indicates that the attribute values are case
insensitive (CIS).
To add a CN to an existing entry/attribute, do:
$entry->addValue("cn", "Leif Hedstrom");
addDNValue Just like addValue, except this method assume the value is a DN attribute,
and will enforce DN normalization. For instance
$dn = "uid=Leif, dc=Netscape, dc=COM";
$entry->addDNValue("uniqueMember", $dn);
will only add the DN for "uid=leif" if it does not exist as a DN in the
uniqueMember attribute.
attrModified This is an internal function, that can be used to force the API to consider
an attribute (value) to have been modified. The only argument is the name of
the attribute. In almost all situation, you never, ever, should call this. If
you do, please contact the developers, and as us to fix the API. Example
$entry->attrModified("cn");
copy Copy the value of one attribute to another. Requires at least two arguments.
The first argument is the name of the attribute to copy, and the second
argument is the name of the new attribute to copy to. The new attribute can
not currently exist in the entry, else the copy will fail. There is an
optional third argument (a boolean flag), which, when set to 1, will force an
override and copy to the new attribute even if it already exists. Returns
TRUE if the copy was successful.
$entry->copy("cn", "description");
exists Return TRUE if the specified attribute is defined in the LDAP entry. This is
useful to know if an entry has a particular attribute, regardless of the
value. For instance:
if ($entry->exists("jpegphoto")) { # do something special }
getDN Return the DN for the entry. For instance
print "The DN is: ", $entry->getDN(), "\n";
Just like setDN, this method also has an optional argument, which indicates
we should normalize the DN before returning it to the caller.
getValues Returns an entire array of values for the attribute specified. Note that
this returns an array, and not a pointer to an array. In a scalar context,
this returns the first value. This is different - this method used to always
return an array, which meant the array size in a scalar context. If you need
to get the array size, use the size method described below.
@someArray = $entry->getValues("description");
$scalval = $entry->getValues("cn");
hasValue Return TRUE or FALSE if the attribute has the specified value. A typical
usage is to see if an entry is of a certain object class, e.g.
if ($entry->hasValue("objectclass", "person", 1)) { # do something }
The (optional) third argument indicates if the string comparison should be
case insensitive or not, and the (optional) fourth argument indicats whether
we should normalize the string as if it was a DN. The first two arguments are
the name and value of the attribute, respectively.
hasDNValue Exactly like hasValue, except we assume the attribute values are DN
attributes.
isAttr This method can be used to decide if an attribute name really is a valid LDAP
attribute in the current entry. Use of this method is fairly limited, but
could potentially be useful. Usage is like previous examples, like
if ($entry->isAttr("cn")) { # do something }
The code section will only be executed if these criterias are true:
1. The name of the attribute is a non-empty string.
2. The name of the attribute does not begin, and end, with an
underscore character (_).
2. The attribute has one or more values in the entry.
isDeleted This is almost identical to isModified, except it tests if an attribute has
been deleted. You use it the same way as above, like
if (! $entry->isDeleted("cn")) { # do something }
isModified This is a somewhat more useful method, which will return the internal
modification status of a particular attribute. The argument is the name of
the attribute, and the return value is True or False. If the attribute has
been modified, in any way, we return True (1), otherwise we return False (0).
For example:
if ($entry->isModified("cn")) { # do something }
isEntryModified
This is a wrapper over isModified(), and it will check if any attribute in
the entry object has been modified or deleted.
matchValue This is very similar to hasValue, except it does a regular expression match
instead of a full string match. It takes the same arguments, including the
optional third argument to specify case insensitive matching. The usage is
identical to the example for hasValue, e.g.
if ($entry->matchValue("objectclass", "pers", 1)) { # do something }
matchDNValue Like matchValue, except the attribute values are considered being DNs.
move Identical to the copy method, except the original attribute is deleted once
the move to the new attribute is complete.
$entry->move("cn", "sn");
printLDIF Print the entry in a format called LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format, RFC
xxxx). An example of an LDIF entry is:
dn: uid=leif,ou=people,dc=netscape,dc=com
objectclass: top
objectclass: person
objectclass: inetOrgPerson
uid: leif
cn: Leif Hedstrom
mail: leif@netscape.com
The above would be the result of
$entry->printLDIF();
If you need to write to a file, open and then select() it. For more useful
LDIF functionality, check out the Mozilla::LDAP::LDIF.pm module.
remove This will remove the entire attribute, including all it's values, from the
entry. The only argument is the name of the attribute to remove. Let's say
you want to nuke all mailAlternateAddress values (i.e. the entire attribute
should be removed from the entry):
$entry->remove("mailAlternateAddress");
removeValue Remove a value from an attribute, if it exists. Of course, if the attribute
has no such value, we won't try to remove it, and instead return a False (0)
status code. The arguments are the name of the attribute, and the particular
value to remove. Note that values are considered case sensitive, so make sure
you preserve case properly. An example is:
$entry->removeValue("objectclass", "nscpPerson");
removeDNValue
This is almost identical to removeValue, except it will normalize the
attribute values before trying to remove them. This is useful if you know
that the attribute is a DN value, but perhaps the values are not cosistent in
all LDAP entries. For example
$dn = "uid=Leif, dc=Netscape, dc=COM";
$entry->removeDNValue("owner", $dn);
will remove the owner "uid=leif,dc=netscape,dc=com", no matter how it's
capitalized and formatted in the entry.
setDN Set the DN to the specified value. Only do this on new entries, it will not
work well if you try to do this on an existing entry. If you wish to rename
an entry, use the Mozilla::Conn::modifyRDN method instead. Eventually we'll
provide a complete "rename" method. To set the DN for a newly created entry,
we can do
$entry->setDN("uid=leif,ou=people,dc=netscape,dc=com");
There is an optional third argument, a boolean flag, indicating that we
should normalize the DN before setting it. This will assure a consistent
format of your DNs.
setValues Set the specified attribute to the new value (or values), overwriting
whatever old values it had before. This is a little dangerous, since you can
lose attribute values you didn't intend to remove. Therefore, it's usually
recommended to use removeValue() and setValues(). If you know exactly what
the new values should be like, you can use this method like
$entry->setValues("cn", "Leif Hedstrom", "The Swede");
$entry->setValues("mail", @mailAddresses);
or if it's a single value attribute,
$entry->setValues("uidNumber", "12345");
size Return the number of values for a particular attribute. For instance
$entry->{cn} = [ "Leif Hedstrom", "The Swede" ];
$numVals = $entry->size("cn");
This will set $numVals to two (2). The only argument is the name of the
attribute, and the return value is the size of the value array.
Deleting entries
To delete an LDAP entry from the LDAP server, you have to use the delete method from the
Mozilla::LDAP::Conn module. It will actually delete any entry, if you provide an
legitimate DN.
Renaming entries
Again, there's no functionality in this object class to rename the entry (i.e. changing
it's DN). For now, there is a way to modify the RDN component of a DN through the
Mozilla::LDAP::Conn module, with modifyRDN. Eventually we hope to have a complete rename
method, which should be capable of renaming any entry, in any way, including moving it to
a different part of the DIT (Directory Information Tree).
EXAMPLES
There are plenty of examples to look at, in the examples directory. We are adding more
examples every day (almost).
INSTALLATION
Installing this package is part of the Makefile supplied in the package. See the
installation procedures which are part of this package.
AVAILABILITY
This package can be retrieved from a number of places, including:
http://www.mozilla.org/directory/
Your local CPAN server
CREDITS
Most of this code was developed by Leif Hedstrom, Netscape Communications Corporation.
BUGS
None. :)
SEE ALSO
Mozilla::LDAP::Conn, Mozilla::LDAP::API, and of course Perl.