RFC 1823 (rfc1823) - Page 2 of 22
The LDAP Application Program Interface
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1823 LDAP API August 1995
person Babs Jensen might be named with the "Barbara Jensen" value
from the commonName attribute. A globally unique name for an entry,
called a distinguished name or DN, is constructed by concatenating
the sequence of RDNs from the root of the tree down to the entry. For
example, if Babs worked for the University of Michigan, the DN of her
U-M entry might be "cn=Barbara Jensen, o=University of Michigan,
c=US". The DN format used by LDAP is defined in [4].
Operations are provided to authenticate, search for and retrieve
information, modify information, and add and delete entries from the
tree. The next sections give an overview of how the API is used and
detailed descriptions of the LDAP API calls that implement all of
these functions.
3. Overview of LDAP API Use
An application generally uses the LDAP API in four simple steps.
o Open a connection to an LDAP server. The ldap_open() call
returns a handle to the connection, allowing multiple
connections to be open at once.
o Authenticate to the LDAP server and/or the X.500 DSA. The
ldap_bind() call and friends support a variety of
authentication methods.
o Perform some LDAP operations and obtain some results.
ldap_search() and friends return results which can be parsed
by ldap_result2error(), ldap_first_entry(), ldap_next_entry(),
etc.
o Close the connection. The ldap_unbind() call closes the
connection.
Operations can be performed either synchronously or asynchronously.
Synchronous calls end in _s. For example, a synchronous search can be
completed by calling ldap_search_s(). An asynchronous search can be
initiated by calling ldap_search(). All synchronous routines return
an indication of the outcome of the operation (e.g, the constant
LDAP_SUCCESS or some other error code). The asynchronous routines
return the message id of the operation initiated. This id can be used
in subsequent calls to ldap_result() to obtain the result(s) of the
operation. An asynchronous operation can be abandoned by calling
ldap_abandon().
Howes & Smith Informational