Bean Mapping

Creating custom domain objects from LDAP entries and vice versa is a common pattern. Ldaptive provides an API for mapping an LdapEntry to any Object provided that object is properly annotated. This support is provided in a separate library that is available in the jars directory of the latest download.

Or included as a maven dependency:

 <dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.ldaptive</groupId>
    <artifactId>ldaptive-beans</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.1</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

The interface for ldap entry mapper looks like:

public interface LdapEntryMapper<T>
{
  String mapDn(T object);

  void map(T source, LdapEntry dest);

  void map(LdapEntry source, T dest);
}

There are two annotations that describe the relationship between your object and an LDAP entry, @Entry and @Attribute. The @Entry annotation is a class level annotation that contains a DN and all the attributes for the entry. The following sample object demonstrates how to use these annotations.

@Entry(
  dn = "distinguishedName", // this can be a property in your object or a hard coded string
  attributes = {
    @Attribute(name = "displayName", property = "name"),  // name of the attribute and the property name on this object
    @Attribute(name = "mail", property = "email"),
    @Attribute(name = "telephoneNumber", property = "phoneNumber"),
    @Attribute(name = "jpegPhoto", property = "photo", binary = true),
    @Attribute(name = "objectClass", values = {"person", "inetOrgPerson"})  // hard coded attribute with values, does not exist on this object
  })
public class MyObject
{
  private String distinguishedName;
  private String name;
  private String email;
  private String phoneNumber;
  private byte[] photo;

  public MyObject() {}

  public MyObject(String dn) { distinguishedName = dn; }


  public String getDistinguishedName() { return distinguishedName; }

  public void setDistinguishedName(String s) { distinguishedName = s; }


  public String getName() { return name; }

  private void setName(String s) { name = s; }

  public String getEmail() { return email; }

  public void setEmail(String s) { email = s; }


  public String getPhoneNumber() { return phoneNumber; }

  public void setPhoneNumber(String s) { phoneNumber = s; }


  public byte[] getPhoto() { return photo; }

  public void setPhoto(byte[] b) { photo = b; }
}

DefaultLdapEntryMapper

Ldaptive provides a default implementation of the the LdapEntryMapper that supports the following types:

Collections and arrays are supported, but property nesting is not. Only simple Java beans should be used with this ldap entry mapper.

ConnectionFactory cf = new DefaultConnectionFactory("ldap://directory.ldaptive.org");
SearchOperation search = new SearchOperation(cf, "dc=ldaptive,dc=org");
SearchResponse res = search.execute("(uid=dfisher)");
LdapEntry entry = res.getEntry();

DefaultLdapEntryMapper<MyObject> mapper = new DefaultLdapEntryMapper<>();
MyObject object = new MyObject();
mapper.map(entry, object); // object is now populated with the values from the ldap entry

LdapEntry newEntry = new LdapEntry();
mapper.map(object, newEntry); // newEntry is now populated with the values from the object

SpringLdapEntryMapper

Ldaptive provides another implementation of LdapEntryMapper that can leverage SPEL for bean property resolution. This allows the conversion of LDAP data for more complex object graphs. The syntax for the @Attribute property is the SPEL expression. Note that the ldaptive-beans pom lists spring as an optional dependency, so if you’re using maven then you’ll have the declare the spring dependency.