NAME

       Net::LDAP::Filter - representation of LDAP filters

SYNOPSIS

         use Net::LDAP::Filter;

         $filter = Net::LDAP::Filter->new( $filter_str );

DESCRIPTION

       The Net::LDAP::Filter object lets you directly manipulate LDAP filters without worrying
       about the string representation and all the associated escaping mechanisms.

CONSTRUCTOR

       new ( [ FILTER ] )
           Create a new object.  If FILTER is given, parse it.

METHODS

       parse ( FILTER )
           Parse FILTER, updating the object to represent it.

       as_string
           Return the filter in text form.

       print ( [ FH ] )
           Print the text representation of the filter to FH, or the currently selected output
           handle if FH is not given.

       negate ( )
           Logically negate/invert the filter object so that it matches the opposite set of
           entries as the original.

           Instead of simply negating the text form by surrounding it with the not operator, the
           negation is done by recursively applying De Morgan's law.

           Here is an example:

            (|(&(cn=A)(cn=B))(|(!(cn=C))(cn=D)))

           gets negated to

            (&(|(!(cn=A))(!(cn=B)))(&(cn=C)(!(cn=D))))

FILTER SYNTAX

       Below is the syntax for a filter given in RFC 4515 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4515.txt

        filter       = "(" filtercomp ")"
        filtercomp   = and / or / not / item
        and          = "&" filterlist
        or           = "|" filterlist
        not          = "!" filter
        filterlist   = 1*filter
        item         = simple / present / substring / extensible
        simple       = attr filtertype value
        filtertype   = equal / approx / greater / less
        equal        = "="
        approx       = "~="
        greater      = ">="
        less         = "<="
        extensible   = attr [":dn"] [":" matchingrule] ":=" value
                       / [":dn"] ":" matchingrule ":=" value
        present      = attr "=*"
        substring    = attr "=" [initial] any [final]
        initial      = value
        any          = "*" *(value "*")
        final        = value
        attr         = AttributeDescription from Section 4.1.4 of RFC 4511
        matchingrule = MatchingRuleId from Section 4.1.8 of RFC 4511
        value        = AttributeValue from Section 4.1.5 of RFC 4511

        Special Character encodings
        ---------------------------
           *               \2a, \*
           (               \28, \(
           )               \29, \)
           \               \5c, \\
           NUL             \00

SEE ALSO

       Net::LDAP, Other online documentation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       This document is based on a document originally written by Russell Fulton
       <r.fulton@auckland.ac.nz>.

AUTHOR

       Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

       Please report any bugs, or post any suggestions, to the perl-ldap mailing list
       <perl-ldap@perl.org>.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Graham Barr. All rights reserved. This program is free software;
       you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.