Chapter 16 Working with Extended Operations

This chapter explains how LDAP v3 extended operations work and how to use the extended operations that are supported by your LDAP server.

• "How Extended Operations Work"
• "Implementing Support for Extended Operations on the Server"
• "Determining the Extended Operations Supported"
• "Performing an Extended Operation"
• "Example: Extended Operation"

• the OID of the extended operation that should be performed
• data specific to the extended operation

• an OID
• any additional data

• You need to write a client that can send requests for a specific extended operation and that can receive extended responses from the server.
• Your LDAP server needs to be able to handle requests for specific extended operations and send responses back to the client.

• registers the OID of an extended operation as supported (so that the OID appears as a value of the supportedExtension attribute; see "Determining the Extended Operations Supported" for more information)
• gets information from an extended operation reqeuest
• creates and sends an extended operation response back to the client

1. Construct a new LDAPExtendedOperation object, specifying the OID of the extended operation and the data that you want applied to the operation.
2. Invoke the extendedOperation method of the LDAPConnection object, passing it the newly constructed LDAPExtendedOperation object.

...

import netscape.ldap.*;

import java.util.*;

import java.io.*;

...

public class ReqExtOp {

   public static void main( String[] args ) {

      LDAPConnection ld = null;

      int status = -1;

      try {

         ld = new LDAPConnection();



         /* Connect to server */

         String MY_HOST = "localhost";

         int MY_PORT = LDAPv2.DEFAULT_PORT;

         ld.connect( MY_HOST, MY_PORT );

         System.out.println( "Connected to server." );



         /* Authenticate to the server as directory manager */

         String MGR_DN = "cn=Directory Manager";

         String MGR_PW = "23skidoo";

         if ( ld.LDAP_VERSION < 3 ) {

            ld.authenticate( 3, MGR_DN, MGR_PW );

         } else {

            System.out.println( "Specified LDAP server does not " + 

               "support v3 of the LDAP protocol." );

            ld.disconnect();

            System.exit(1);

         }

         System.out.println( "Authenticated to directory." );



         /* Create an extended operation object */

         String myval = "My Value";

         byte vals[] = myval.getBytes( "UTF8" );

         LDAPExtendedOperation exop = 

            new LDAPExtendedOperation("1.2.3.4", vals );

         System.out.println( "Created LDAPExtendedOperation object." );



         /* Request the extended operation from the server. */

         LDAPExtendedOperation exres = ld.extendedOperation( exop );

         System.out.println( "Performed extended operation." );



         /* Get data from the response sent by the server. */

         System.out.println( "OID: " + exres.getID() );

         String retValue = new String( exres.getValue(), "UTF8" );

         System.out.println( "Value: " + retValue );

      }

      catch( LDAPException e ) {

         System.out.println( "Error: " + e.toString() );

      }

      catch( UnsupportedEncodingException e ) {

         System.out.println( "Error: UTF8 not supported" );

      }



      /* Done, so disconnect */

      if ( (ld != null) && ld.isConnected() ) {

         try {

            ld.disconnect();

         } catch ( LDAPException e ) {

            System.out.println( "Error: " + e.toString() );

         }

      }

      System.exit(status);

   }

}

...