The cfldap tag lets you search an LDAP directory. The tag returns a ColdFusion query object with the results, which you can use as you would any query result. When you query an LDAP directory, you specify the directory entry where the search starts and the attributes whose values to return. You can specify the search scope and attribute content filtering rules and use other attributes to further control the search.

Scope

The search scope sets the limits of a search. The default scope is the level below the distinguished name specified in the start attribute. This scope does not include the entry identified by the start attribute. For example, if the start attribute is "ou=support, o=adobe" the level below support is searched. You can restrict a query to the level of the start entry, or extend it to the entire subtree below the start entry.

Search filter

The search filter syntax has the form attribute operator value. The default filter, objectclass=*, returns all entries in the scope.

The following table lists the filter operators:

The Boolean operators & and | can operate on more than two attributes and precede all of the attributes on which they operate. You surround a filter with parentheses and use parentheses to group conditions.

If the pattern that you are matching contains an asterisk, left parenthesis, right parenthesis, backslash, or NUL character, you must use the following three-character escape sequence in place of the character:

For example, to match the common name St*r Industries, use the filter:

(cn=St\2Ar Industries).

LDAP v3 supports an extensible match filter that permits server-specific matching rules. For more information on using extensible match filters, see your LDAP server documentation.

Searching and sorting notes

• To search for multiple values of a multivalued attribute type, use the & operator to combine expressions for each attribute value. For example, to search for an entry in which cn=Robert Jones and cn=Bobby Jones, specify the following filter:
  filter="(&(cn=Robert Jones)(cn=Bobby Jones))"
  
  
• You can use object classes as search filter attributes; for example, you can use the following search filter:
  filter="(objectclass=inetorgperson)"
  
  
• To specify how query results are sorted, use the sort field to identify the attribute(s) to sort. By default, ColdFusion returns sorted results in case-sensitive ascending order. To specify descending order, case-insensitive sorting, or both, use the sortControl attribute.
• ColdFusion requests the LDAP server to do the sorting. This can have the following effects:
  • The sort order might differ between ColdFusion MX and previous versions.
  • If you specify sorting and the LDAP server does not support sorting, ColdFusion generates an error. To sort results from servers that do not support sorting, use a query of queries on the results.
• If you use filter operators to construct sophisticated search criteria, performance might degrade if the LDAP server is slow to process the synchronous search routines that cfldap supports. You can use the cfldap tag timeout and maxRows attributes to control the apparent performance of pages that perform queries, by limiting the number of entries and by exiting the query if the server does not respond in a specified time.

Getting all the attributes of an entry

Typically, you do not use a query that gets all the attributes in an entry. Such a query would return attributes that are used only by the directory server. However, you can get all the attributes by specifying attributes="*" in your query.

If you do this, ColdFusion returns the results in a structure in which each element contains a single attribute name-value pair. The tag does not return a query object. ColdFusion does this because LDAP directory entries, unlike the rows in a relational table, vary depending on their object class.

For example, the following code retrieves the contents of the Airius directory:

<cfldap name="GetList"
    server=#myServer#
    action="query"
    attributes="*"
    scope="subtree"
    start="o=airius.com"
    sort="sn,cn">

This tag returns entries for all the people in the organization and entries for all the groups. The group entries have a different object class, and therefore different attributes from the person entries. If ColdFusion returned both types of entries in one query object, some rows would have only the group-specific attribute values and the other rows would have only person-specific attribute values. Instead, ColdFusion returns a structure in which each attribute is an entry.