Although you complain that the responses are vague, they are not. The API exposed by Net::LDAP is pretty much a Perl equivalent to the OpenLDAP C API. As such, if you want to be able to get the information for a single entry, you need to go through the bind and search steps

The bind can be anonymous, if you LDAP server allows it and allows retrieval of the object whose DN you already have. If not, then you need to bind with that DN and provide the password associated with it. Once you do the bind, you can do a search for the DN. Once you have the search, you have the attributes and values associated with it.

Even if you do a non-anonymous bind, what returns in Net::LDAP is a connection variable, not a hash or array of information on the entity that made the connection

Your experience with Windows and Visual Basic has led you to believe that there is some magical way to say, "I have this DN, give me the attributes associated with it". Although the API you were using made this easy, behind the scenes what was happening is what you have to do more explicitly if you were using, say, C, Perl, or something else

Thank you for replying. It appears you took the time to actually read my request.

I understand what you're saying but constructing a filter for a distinguished name does not appear to work. Here is a bit of test code I wrote.

sub getLDAPInfo
{
        my $targetuser = shift;
        my $ldapuser = "SomeUser";
        my $ldappassword = "SomePassword";
        my $domain = "dc.mycompany.com";
        my $fullname;

        my $ad = Net::LDAP->new($domain) or die "Could not connect!";

        $ad->bind($ldapuser, password=>$ldappassword);
        my $searchbase = 'DC=mycompany,DC=com';
        my $filter = "samaccountname=$targetuser";
     
        my $results = $ad->search(base=>$searchbase,filter=>$filter);

        my $count = $results->count;

        if ($count)
        {
                my @entries = $results->entries;
                foreach my $entry (@entries)
                {
                        $fullname = $entry->get_value('givenname'). " 
+" . $entry->get_value('sn');
                return ($fullname);
        }
        else
        {
                return "";
        }

        $ad->unbind;
}

my $fullname= &getLDAPInfo("JUSER");
print $fullname. "\n";
[download]

This works perfectly. However, if I change the filter like so:

        my $filter = "distinguishedname=$targetuser";
[download]

And pass it a distinguished name like so:

my $fullname= &getLDAPInfo("CN=JUSER,OU=ACCT,DC=MYCOMPANY,DC=COM");
[download]

it returns nothing. I have tried to build the filter as both distinguishedname= and dn= to no avail.

If, as you say, I still need to do the search, please help me understand how to construct the filter to search for a distinguished name.

Thanks,

Whenever I'm stuck with figuring out proper LDAP usage, I revert to testing with LDAP Browser Editor Despite. Based on your code looking for sAMAccountname, plus the fact you call your variable 'ad', I'm guessing you're hitting an Active Directory server. I know that LBE will be able to hit it (it works with ours) and you can triple check your filters.

For one thing, you need parens around the filter: (dn=CN=JUSER,OU=ACCT,DC=MYCOMPANY,DC=COM). I always use dn, but distinguishedname might also be valid. Use the sAMAccountname filter to view your entry in LBE and verify that you are actually using the distinguished name of the person

behind the scenes what was happening is what you have to do more explicitly if you were using, say, C, Perl, or something else

;) Well, in perl , DBD::LDAP looks pretty slick

Was what you posted supposed to be helpful? ...

Absolutely. I don't see what is hard or vague about grepping the documentation, and copy and pasting the bits you need, even if its verbose, because the api provided is verbose

Seriously, I posted here because I thought I would find people who would help.

Well, if the responses so far haven't been helpful, what would you consider helpful?

Posting vague comments is not helpful.

So is complaining about them :) but FWIW, I posted a link to examples you could (eventually) copy/paste