Spring Data LDAP

Spring Data LDAP is a project that provides a familiar and consistent repository abstraction for Spring LDAP. It builds on top of Spring LDAP’s LdapTemplate and Object-Directory Mapping (ODM) features and provides repository implementations for CRUD operations on LDAP entries. Spring Data LDAP can be used to develop applications that access LDAP directories for a variety of purposes, such as:

• User authentication and authorization
• Data synchronization
• Auditing
• Compliance reporting

Features

• Repository abstraction: It offers a repository abstraction layer similar to Spring Data JPA. This allows writing queries and performing CRUD operations on LDAP entries
• Search capabilities – It supports complex search queries using criteria, filters, and sorting. Both simple and paged searches are supported.
• Transactions – LDAP operations can be executed within transactions for consistency.
• Templating – It offers LDAP templates to perform common operations like searching, adding etc in a simpler way.

Dependency

Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-ldap</artifactId>
    <version>3.2.3</version>
</dependency>

Gradle:

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.data:spring-data-ldap:3.2.3'
}

Configuration

The recommended way of configuring Spring LDAP is to use the custom XML configuration namespace. To make this available, you need to include the Spring LDAP namespace declaration in your bean file, as follows:

XML

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:ldap="http://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap https://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap/spring-ldap.xsd">

LDAP Entities

• In Spring LDAP, LDAP entities are Java classes that represent entries in an LDAP directory. Spring LDAP provides a way to map LDAP directory data to Java objects and vice versa.
• Entities represent LDAP objects and are annotated with @Entry.
• Entities can have default/custom constructors.
• Entities are Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) and don’t extend any classes.
• Attributes of the LDAP object are mapped to properties of the entity using @Attribute.

LDAP Repositories

• Spring LDAP repositories are a Spring Data abstraction that makes it easy to interact with LDAP directories using the Spring Data repository paradigm. Spring Data repositories provide a consistent and easy-to-use way to perform CRUD operations on LDAP entities.
• Repositories extend the LdapRepository interface to define CRUD methods.
• Standard Spring Data methods like findAll(), findById() etc. are supported.
• Repositories provide a higher level of abstraction over raw LDAP APIs.

Conclusion

Spring Data LDAP is a powerful tool that can be used to develop applications that access LDAP directories. It provides a familiar and consistent repository abstraction that makes it easy to develop applications that perform CRUD operations on LDAP entries.