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Introduction#

For ages, some people have desired an LDAP client sufficient to use as an address book.

Such an LDAP client must have the following features:

• Create, update and delete LDAP entries
  • Edit attributes which are part of the distinguished name (DN)
  • Create update and delete attributes

Starting from:

• IBM Jersey Contacts Example

Need to continue using the DN=uid=random,uid=realuser,ou=People... trick as not sure how to describe "uniqueness" in LDAP without unique DNs.

The URIs for the contacts will be http://server:port/addressbook/contact/uid

Exiting LDAP CLients#

• Apache Directory Studio: awesome tool, but overkill for an address book
• Evolution: great but only for Linux users
• Apple Address Book.app: read only
• Thunderbird: read only

ldapservice#

The ldapservice project provides a Java EE web application with a REST API for interacting with an LDAP server.

• Public SVN repository: http://spacepirates.com/ro/ldapservice/
• Committers SVN repository: http://spacepirates.com/rw/ldapservice/

ldapclient#

The ldapclient project provides and HTML5 application which is a GUI interacting with the ldapservice.

Dealing with Updating DN#

• Edit DN: clone, change DN, remove original, insert clone with new DN

Tools#

• Tomcat 7
• Spring Framework
• Spring LDAP
• Spring Security
• JAX-RS (Jersey)
• Spring Security LDAP

Hints#

• Use Spring @Autowired with Jersey
• Jersey @Produces both XML and JSON
• Spring LDAP OdrManager Example
• Spring 3 Required Libraries
• Spring Security Expression Language Reference
• Spring Security Tutorial
• Use ResourceContext to get Autowired Subresources
• Spring LDAP and Transactions

Learning#

Netbeans 7 has some handy code generation tools (e.g. constructors, toString, hashCode, etc.).

Netbeans 7 automatically detects Jersey web services and shows the RESTful Web Service node in the project tree.

Netbeans 7 detects copy and pasted class references and generates the necessary import statements.

Netbeans 7 autodeploy on change to Tomcat is working nicely, even detects changes to Spring context.xml.

Netbeans 7 automatically fills in the correct xsi:schemalocation URLs when you add an xmlns: to your Spring context.xml.

Status#

Code has been committed. Here's is an XML output from the "addressbook" service:

And here's the mocked contact output in JSON:

{"contact":[
{
  "displayName":"Joe Lion","faxNumber":"","firstName":"Joe",
  "homePhone":"510 222 5555","htmlEmail":"false","lastName":"Lion",
  "mobileNumber":"510 333 6666","nickname":"JoeL","pagerNumber":"",
  "primaryEmail":"joelion@jungle.com","secondaryEmail":"",
  "uid":"1","workPhone":""
},
{
  "displayName":"Sam Snake","faxNumber":"","firstName":"Sam",
  "homePhone":"510 444 5555","htmlEmail":"false","lastName":"Snake",
  "mobileNumber":"510 555 6666","nickname":"SamS","pagerNumber":"",
  "primaryEmail":"samsnake@jungle.com","secondaryEmail":"",
  "uid":"2","workPhone":""
}
]}