Ldif NPM | npm.io

node-ldif

Nodejs LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format) parser based on RFC2849

Unless you are an LDAP aficionado you may not know about the LDIF format. I was surprised to learn that no LDIF parsing library existed for node. So I wrote one, with peg.js.

Now I'll never have to use that cursed perl script again!

Design Goals

100% RFC-compliance; should comprehend any valid LDIF file
Parsed records stored internally intact
Methods are provided to extract record data in various formats
Outputs exactly compatilble LDIF for any parsed record or file
Automatic decoding and outputting of base64 data
No external library dependencies; pure Node Javascript
Includes complete test suite

Usage

Installation

Install easily with npm!

npm install ldif

Parsing

Parsing strings

var ldif = require('ldif'),
    file = './rfc/example1.ldif',
    input = require('fs').readFileSync(file,'utf8');

console.log(ldif.parse(input));

After reading the file, it's parsed as a string.
There's also a shorthand to read in a file (synchronously, as above):

File parsing shorthand

var ldif = require('ldif');
console.log(ldif.parseFile('./rfc/example1.ldif'));

Parsing an LDIF file returns an object format for an entire LDIF file.
In this case, example1.ldif specifies contents of two LDAP records.

Shifting records from parsed file

var ldif = require('ldif');
    file = ldif.parseFile('./rfc/example1.ldif');

var record = file.shift();

Records are stored in an internal format, using classic Javascript objects. The type or value specified in a type property for all objects, but they can also be tested for specific constructor types:

var ldif = require('ldif');
    file = ldif.parseFile('./rfc/example1.ldif');

(file instanceof ldif.Container)        === true
(file.shift() instanceof ldif.Record)   === true

Converting

Record to plain object

var ldif = require('ldif');
    file = ldif.parseFile('./rfc/example1.ldif'),
    output_options = {};

var record = file.shift();
console.log(record.toObject(output_options));

Output of the above code is this:

{ dn: 'cn=Barbara Jensen, ou=Product Development, dc=airius, dc=com',
  attributes: 
   { objectclass: [ 'top', 'person', 'organizationalPerson' ],
     cn: [ 'Barbara Jensen', 'Barbara J Jensen', 'Babs Jensen' ],
     sn: 'Jensen',
     uid: 'bjensen',
     telephonenumber: '+1 408 555 1212',
     description: 'A big sailing fan.' } }

Notice the default behavior outputs attribute key/value pairs that have values of either an array or single string. Since an attribute can be single- or multi-valued, this format makes sense in most cases.

toObject(options)

The behavior of toObject() can be altered with options below.

Option	Type	Description	Deafult
flatten	boolean	Flatten single values into strings	true
single	boolean	Overrides flatten, only returns single values	false
decode	boolean	Decode values (not yet well-defined, leave true)	true
preserveOptions	boolean	Outputs any attribute options	true
preferOptions	array	Prefer these options when `preserveOptions` is false

Outputting LDIF for parsed files

All parsed data can be written back to LDIF format using a toLDIF() method (on files or entries).

var ldif = require('ldif');
    file = ldif.parseFile('./rfc/example1.ldif');

// the whole file
console.log(file.toLDIF());

// or just a single record
console.log(file.shift().toLDIF());

Note: toLDIF() method folds lines by default at 78 characters. If you want to change this value call toLDIF(width) where width is an integer.