Count Number of Entries in LDAP Search

Question

So I just got started with LDAP, and was reading this tutorial on LDAP with PHP.

http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Using-PHP-With-LDAP-part-1/4/

There, once the result set is obtained. There were two commands/functions I came across...

    <?php // print number of entries found 
    echo "Number of entries found: " . ldap_count_entries($conn, $result) . "<p>"; ?>

and

  <?php // get entry data as array
  $info = ldap_get_entries($conn, $result); 
  // iterate over array and print data for each entry 
  for ($i=0; $i<$info["count"]; $i++) { echo "dn is: ". $info[$i]["dn"] ."<br>";
  echo "first cn is: ". $info[$i]["cn"][0] ."<br>";
  echo "first email address is: ". $info[$i]["mail"][0] ."<p>"; 
  } ?>

So, in what ways do ldap_count_entries and $info["count"] differ?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

As far as I know, the difference is mainly between whether you have to retrieve the results from the server or not.

To get $info['count'] you have to retrieve the complete result from the server via ldap_get_entries which might be a lengthy thing depending on the size of the result and the connection to your LDAP-Server.

To check whether it's worth the effort you can get the size of the resultset with ldap_count entries and depending on that result your application can decide what to do.