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The Active Directory ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live Active Directory, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Active Directory objects like you would a database - access Users, Groups, Roles, and Contacts, or define custom tables for any ObjectClass, and then perform SQL queries through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Connect to Active Directory Data in Ruby


Connect to Active Directory data in Ruby with ruby-dbi, dbd-odbc, and ruby-odbc.

The CData ODBC Driver for Active Directory makes it easy to integrate connectivity to live Active Directory data in Ruby. This article shows how to create a simple Ruby app that connects to Active Directory data, executes a query, and displays the results.

Create an ODBC Connection to Active Directory Data

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To establish a connection, set the following properties:

  • Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., Domain\BobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
  • Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.

  • BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.

    Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.

Installing Ruby and Necessary Gems

If you do not have Ruby installed, refer to the Ruby installation page. With Ruby installed, you will need to install the ruby-dbi, dbd-odbc, and ruby-odbc gems:

gem install dbi gem install dbd-odbc gem install ruby-odbc

Create a Ruby App with Connectivity to Active Directory Data

Create a new Ruby file (for example: ActiveDirectorySelect.rb) and open it in a text editor. Copy the following code into your file:

#connect to the DSN require 'DBI' cnxn = DBI.connect('DBI:ODBC:CData ActiveDirectory Source','','') #execute a SELECT query and store the result set resultSet = cnxn.execute("SELECT Id, LogonCount FROM User") #display the names of the columns resultSet.column_names.each do |name| print name, "\t" end puts #display the results while row = resultSet.fetch do (0..resultSet.column_names.size - 1).each do |n| print row[n], "\t" end puts end resultSet.finish #close the connection cnxn.disconnect if cnxn

With the file completed, you are ready to display your Active Directory data with Ruby. To do so, simply run your file from the command line:

ruby ActiveDirectorySelect.rb Writing SQL-92 queries to Active Directory allows you to quickly and easily incorporate Active Directory data into your own Ruby applications. Download a free trial today!