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AdoLDAP

Summary

• How it works
• Requirements
• Configuration
  • Domain Information
  • Connection Configuration
• Searching
  • Query Builder
  • Search Dialects
• Handling Data
  • Models & Column Map Attributes
  • Special Attributes
  • Paging Data
  • After Fetch Callback

• Comming Soon

  :warning: WARNING: :warning: This library still on alfa, so testing is on the way and newer versions may break backwards compability.

The AdoLDAP is a small PHP library to seamless search and authenticate on Active Directory with ADO and LDAP. In short terms it provides the following benefits:

• :star: Seamless way to connect to Active Directory, not requiring a single configurtion, not even a server if you wanted.
• :star: A nice semantic syntax that is easy/reusable/fun to use. You can use pre built searchs to find Users, Computers and Groups, handling them as objects, with a easy human readable get/set syntax.
• :star: A fluent QueryBuilder having support for both LDAP and SQL dialects.
• :star: Tools to discover information about you current env, regarding to the available Domain Controllers, connected DCs, main DCs, domain name etc.
• :star: Native PHP data type handling. No strangeous and obscure VARIANT objects for returned values, with a nice Iterator interface to loop through objects.

How it works

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The main feature that AdoLDAP provides is a seamless way to authenticate on AD with LDAP using the current security context of the thread in execution. This is a feature implemented by the ADODB Active Directory Interface, which can be used through COM objects whithin PHP language (or any COM aware language). Usually this means if the current user are logged on a domain, and this user have permission to search on AD (which likely will), the ADODB don't require especific cridentials to connect.

In another words, now you can create web applications that can search through LDAP without the need of a especific read/write user to connect. For example, you can use Windows Authentication setup and take advantage of a seamless search information about the current authenticated user. You also can test on your local machine even not having Windows Authentication.

Requirements

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• Windows environtment.
• PHP >= 7.1 64bits
• COM PHP extension enabled
• Composer

The AdoLDAP only works on Windows, because COM extensions is the way to use ADODB, since ADO is a Windows only. To install AdoLDAP use the following command:

Configuration

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Domain Information

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Like was said you can search providing no information to connect. This is due to the feature of ADODB that allows connections provding zero information about, credentials or host to connect. If you provide no information about the host or the baseDn to be used to connect, the library will likely connect to the user logonDomainController, which is the domain controller host that the user was last connected.

To understant what domain informations are available, use the following code:

The table below provides the information for each attribute returned:

Connection configuration

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Even not beign necessary to provide a single configuration to connect, is recommended to do it due to consistency of the search results and specially for performance reasons. Is recommeded to provide a BASE_DN (you can use the defaultNamingContext) and for servers is preferreable to use the primaryDomainControllers, to a faster connection. So after you inspect the values returned by the code above, use them to connect like in the code below:

The table below provides the information for each configuration:

Searching

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There are two ways to search, using RAW queries or building through the QueryBuilder.

Searching using RAW queries:

Searching using QueryBuilder:

Query Builder

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The query builder allows you to easily create queries using both LDAP and SQL Dialects. The main class AdoLDAP provides a search method that is a new instance of a SearchFactory. The SearchFactory can setup a new QueryBuilder to construct a search. You can use the newQuery method of SearchFactory to build a QueryBuilder, but you also can use any available method of QueryBuilder due to the magic methods present on SearchFactory, like the example below:

The SearchFactory also provides pre built or scoped searchs, to facilitate search users, computers and groups.

Summarizing, the QueryBuilder is compound by methods to construct the selection of attributes and conditional clausules, to search from a sepecific source, using either the LDAPDialect or SQLDialect. You build a SELECT with the select method, define the clausules with the where methods, having the possibility to use either the LDAPDialect or SQLDialect. You can also change and set a specific BASE_DN with the from method.

NOTE: Is not necessary to define a base dn using from, because the value provided in configuration is used by default.

Search Dialects

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The QueryBuilder can search using both the LDAP and SQL dialects. You can configure the dialect on the configuration, like the example below:

The default dialect is LDAPDialect. You can have your own implementation of both dialects by implementing a DialectInterface.

Handling Data

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Once you create your search, the data is retrivied by a ResultSetIterator. Using ADODB the result data is returned by a RecordSet which have similar function as a cursor, or a iterator. The ResultSetIterator implements the native PHP classes SeekableIterator and Countable, so in this way it's possible to simply loop through like it was array on a foreach.

Each position of a RecordSet is retrievied by the current method of a ResultSetIterator. The data is typically returned as a Entry. A Entry holds all attributes returned by the search and expose them as get/set magic attributes, like in the example above, or you can also use getAttribute and setAttribute to get the desired values. If a attribute does not exists a null value will be returned instead.

Models & Column Map Attributes

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Most of the searchs actually returns one of the Models, could beign a User, Computer or Group. The Model extends a Entry by provinding a human readeable get/set methods for the "default attributes", that enhances and facilitates the handling of certain values. If you find particular hard to understand the meaning or just don't known the available main attributes for objects on LDAP, the Model provides a COLUMN_MAP that maps the most important attributes of the corresponding AD object, to the more "human readeable" names. For example take a look to the COLUMN_MAP of a User:

So in this way, the User model provides a list of get/set attributes using the mapped names, but if you prefer to use the original name scheme, you can still use the get/set magic attributes or the getAttribute and setAttribute methods.

The available mapped attributes are physically present on the Model class to facilitate the auto complete features of IDEs. The Model can also provides special treatment to facilitate the usage of certains attributes, like a user photo.

The getHtmlPhoto returns a IMG HTML tag, already containing the class profile-picture, using the src as base64 string representation of the image. For the photo attribute you can also get just the base64 or the raw binary string or even save the photo to a file, with the respective methods getPhoto, getRawPhoto, savePhoto.

You can also use the mapped attributes in a QueryBuilder selection.

If you use the SearchFactory to search a single Entry, the user, computer and group methods also provides a parameter that already translate the attributes, in fact the default behavior of these methods is to translate attributes.

If you provide no attributes to those methods, the entire COLUMN_MAP will be used instead.

:warning: IMPORTANT: :warning: Is possible to select all attributes, by provinding the value ['*'], but this is EXTREMELY DISCOURAGED, not only by the fact that may have a lot of attributes that possibily won't be used, but specially to performance reasons. When you use a query, using the wildcard * the ADODB returns the ADSPATH, which is the full distinguished name of the object, forcing the library to resolve them by binding directly to the object using COM, which is EXTREMELY slow even for a single object. Normally searching for a entry takes arround 200-400ms, but binding to the object can take 4s. So only use for test purposes.

Special Attributes

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In addition to the Model, some attributes are handled as objects, like the DistinguishedName, OS, Address and ObjectClass.

DistinguidedName

The DistinguishedName class as the name says handles the distinguished name, providing easy way to extract components and parts inside the name.

ObjectClass

The ObjectClass is a simple object wrap to the array of the objectClass attributes. The class also provides the method getMostRelevant which is the last and most significative name of a ObjectClass. Each Model already have a defined objectClass that can be obtained by using the static method objectClass.

Address

The Address is a simple POJO object for the all address related attributes present on User entry. You can note that the COLUMN_MAP maps the address as 4 other attributes, which are flatten to compose the selection on the QueryBuilder. The Address also have a more clear syntax and name scheme.

OS

The OS handles the OS related values of the attributes operatingSystem and operatingSystemVersion, that can be found on Computer entries. The class extracts and splits the data providing methods to retrieve the name, version, flavour, and also ways to easily compare OSs.

Paging Data

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The ADODB natively page the results by using the RecordSet, which are managed by the ResultSetIterator. You can provide a specific LDAP page size by a value for pageSize configuration. The default value is 1000. Nevertheless, the ResultSetIterator provides a separate paging using the getEntries method, which allows you to define a proper limit/offset.

After Fetch Callback

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The ResultSetIterator also provides a afterFetch callback, which allows you to transform the entries every time the current method is called.

You can set afterFetch multiple times, which will transform the data multiple times by the order that was provided.

Comming Soon

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• Active Record Model. For now only search functionality is available.
• Event support.
• More robust QueryBuilder.
• Full and complete documentation site.
• Cache support.

For Last

Thanks for the Adldap2 for inspiration to create this library.

Made with :heart: by @lucasmarotta.