How to get username confirmation from LDAP using ldapTemplate?

Question

I've been searching for a way to validate a username with LDAP using the spring ldapTemplate.

My search led me to

ldapTemplate.search(base, filter, contextMapper/AttributeMapper)

But i'm wondering what i need to put in the contextMapper or attributeMapper. From what i've read, it is used to map the data to an object. But I dont need the object. I only want a boolean to know if it exists or not.

An example of my attributes:

base="ou=accounts,dc=example,dc=local"
// Replace $1 with the username we'd like to find.
filter="(&(objectclass=Person)(sAMAccountName=$1))"

My template contains the url, username and password and connection has been established.

I could use a little help as i'm not sure if using the search method is the right way to go here.

I have authentication set up with the ldapTemplate and would like to re-use it.

thanks

Answer 1

You will have to either

• implement ContextMapper in your own class which will process the search results, or
• use LdapEntryIdentificationContextMapper to hold the received entries.

For the latter, just create an empty instance using new LdapEntryIdentificationContextMapper(); and add that to your search() call. The result will be an instance of List<LdapEntryIdentification> which you can walk through.