NAME

Net::LDAP::Filter - representation of LDAP filters

SYNOPSIS

use Net::LDAP::Filter;

$filter = Net::LDAP::Filter->new( $filter_str );

DESCRIPTION

The Net::LDAP::Filter object lets you directly manipulate LDAP filters without worrying about the string representation and all the associated escaping mechanisms.

CONSTRUCTOR

new ( [ FILTER ] )

Create a new object. If FILTER is given, parse it.

METHODS

parse ( FILTER )

Parse FILTER, updating the object to represent it.

as_string

Return the filter in text form.

print ( [ FH ] )

Print the text representation of the filter to FH, or the currently selected output handle if FH is not given.

negate ( )

Logically negate/invert the filter object so that it matches the opposite set of entries as the original.

Instead of simply negating the text form by surrounding it with the not operator, the negation is done by recursively applying De Morgan's law.

Here is an example:

(|(&(cn=A)(cn=B))(|(!(cn=C))(cn=D)))

gets negated to

(&(|(!(cn=A))(!(cn=B)))(&(cn=C)(!(cn=D))))

FILTER SYNTAX

Below is the syntax for a filter given in RFC 4515 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4515.txt

filter       = "(" filtercomp ")"
filtercomp   = and / or / not / item
and          = "&" filterlist
or           = "|" filterlist
not          = "!" filter
filterlist   = 1*filter
item         = simple / present / substring / extensible
simple       = attr filtertype value
filtertype   = equal / approx / greater / less
equal        = "="
approx       = "~="
greater      = ">="
less         = "<="
extensible   = attr [":dn"] [":" matchingrule] ":=" value
               / [":dn"] ":" matchingrule ":=" value
present      = attr "=*"
substring    = attr "=" [initial] any [final]
initial      = value
any          = "*" *(value "*")
final        = value
attr         = AttributeDescription from Section 4.1.4 of RFC 4511
matchingrule = MatchingRuleId from Section 4.1.8 of RFC 4511
value        = AttributeValue from Section 4.1.5 of RFC 4511


Special Character encodings
---------------------------
   *               \2a, \*
   (               \28, \(
   )               \29, \)
   \               \5c, \\
   NUL             \00

SEE ALSO

Net::LDAP, Other online documentation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This document is based on a document originally written by Russell Fulton <r.fulton@auckland.ac.nz>.

AUTHOR

Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com>

Please report any bugs, or post any suggestions, to the perl-ldap mailing list <perl-ldap@perl.org>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Graham Barr. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.