17.8.1. Problem

17.8.2. Solution

$ds = ldap_connect('ldap.example.com')                 or die($php_errormsg);
ldap_bind($ds)                                         or die($php_errormsg);
$sr = ldap_search($ds, 'o=Example Inc., c=US', 'sn=*') or die($php_errormsg);
$e  = ldap_get_entries($ds, $sr)                       or die($php_errormsg);

for ($i=0; $i < $e['count']; $i++) {
    echo $info[$i]['cn'][0] . ' (' . $info[$i]['mail'][0] . ')<br>';
}

ldap_close($ds)                                        or die($php_errormsg);

17.8.3. Discussion

In addition, instead of the flat structure provided by a database, an LDAP server allows you to organize people in a hierarchical fashion. For example, employees may be divided into marketing, technical, and operations divisions, or they can be split regionally into North America, Europe, and Asia. This makes it easy to find all employees of a particular subset of a company.

$ds = ldap_connect('ldap.example.com')                 or die($php_errormsg);
ldap_bind($ds)                                         or die($php_errormsg);

ldap_bind($ds, $username, $password)                   or die($php_errormsg);

Once logged in, you can request information. Because the information is arranged in a hierarchy, you need to indicate the base distinguished name as the second parameter. Finally, you pass in the search criteria. For example, here's how to find all people with a surname of Jones at company Example Inc. located in the country US:

$sr = ldap_search($ds, 'o=Example Inc., c=US', 'sn=Jones') or die($php_errormsg);
$e  = ldap_get_entries($ds, $sr)                           or die($php_errormsg);

for ($i=0; $i < $e['count']; $i++) {
    echo $e[$i]['cn'][0] . ' (' . $e[$i]['mail'][0] . ')<br>';
}

Instead of doing count($e), use the precomputed record size located in $e['count']. Inside the loop, print the first common name and email address for each record. For example:

David Sklar (sklar@example.com)
Adam Trachtenberg (adam@example.com)

17.8.4. See Also