Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the LDAP Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

LDAP Icon LDAP JDBC Driver

Rapidly create and deploy powerful Java applications that integrate with LDAP directory services!

Create a Data Access Object for LDAP Objects using JDBI



A brief overview of creating a SQL Object API for LDAP objects in JDBI.

JDBI is a SQL convenience library for Java that exposes two different style APIs, a fluent style and a SQL object style. The CData JDBC Driver for LDAP integrates connectivity to live LDAP objects in Java applications. By pairing these technologies, you gain simple, programmatic access to LDAP objects. This article walks through building a basic Data Access Object (DAO) and the accompanying code to read and write LDAP objects.

Create a DAO for the LDAP User Entity

The interface below declares the desired behavior for the SQL object to create a single method for each SQL statement to be implemented.

public interface MyUserDAO { //insert new data into LDAP @SqlUpdate("INSERT INTO User (CN, LogonCount) values (:cN, :logonCount)") void insert(@Bind("cN") String cN, @Bind("logonCount") String logonCount); //request specific data from LDAP (String type is used for simplicity) @SqlQuery("SELECT LogonCount FROM User WHERE CN = :cN") String findLogonCountByCN(@Bind("cN") String cN); /* * close with no args is used to close the connection */ void close(); }

Open a Connection to LDAP

Collect the necessary connection properties and construct the appropriate JDBC URL for connecting to LDAP.

To establish a connection, the following properties under the Authentication section must be provided:

  • 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.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the LDAP JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.ldap.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

A connection string for LDAP will typically look like the following:

jdbc:ldap:User=Domain\BobF;Password=bob123456;Server=10.0.1.1;Port=389;

Use the configured JDBC URL to obtain an instance of the DAO interface. The particular method shown below will open a handle bound to the instance, so the instance needs to be closed explicitly to release the handle and the bound JDBC connection.

DBI dbi = new DBI("jdbc:ldap:User=Domain\BobF;Password=bob123456;Server=10.0.1.1;Port=389;"); MyUserDAO dao = dbi.open(MyUserDAO.class); //do stuff with the DAO dao.close();

Read LDAP Objects

With the connection open to LDAP, simply call the previously defined method to retrieve data from the User entity in LDAP.

//disply the result of our 'find' method String logonCount = dao.findLogonCountByCN("Administrator"); System.out.println(logonCount);

Write LDAP Objects

It is also simple to write data to LDAP, using the previously defined method.

//add a new entry to the User entity dao.insert(newCN, newLogonCount);

Since the JDBI library is able to work with JDBC connections, you can easily produce a SQL Object API for LDAP by integrating with the CData JDBC Driver for LDAP. Download a free trial and work with live LDAP objects in custom Java applications today.