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https://github.com/txstate-etc/ldap-async

A wrapper around ldapjs to provide promises, pooling, config by environment, and other conveniences.
https://github.com/txstate-etc/ldap-async

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A wrapper around ldapjs to provide promises, pooling, config by environment, and other conveniences.

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README 

        
# Overview

This library is a wrapper around [ldapjs](http://ldapjs.org/) providing convenience with a few core principles:

* Focus on promises and async iterators, do away with callbacks and event-emitting streams

* Always use a connection pool

* Hide everything having to do with acquiring/releasing connections

* Provide an easy way to configure with environment variables

* Provide lots of convenience methods and restructure return data for easier lookups



# Upgrade from v1.0 to v2.0

You WILL have to alter your usage after upgrading to 2.0. The major breaking change is the

return object from search queries. See the section below titled "Return Object".



# Getting Started

## Standard connection

An Ldap instance represents a connection pool. You will want to make a single pool and export it so that it can

be imported in any other code file in your project.

```javascript

import Ldap from 'ldap-async'

export const ldap = new Ldap({

  // either

  url: 'ldap://yourhost:10389',

  // or

  host: 'yourhost',

  port: 10389,

  secure: false,



  // optional pool size (default is 5 simultaneous connections)

  poolSize: 5,



  // then your login and password

  bindDN: 'cn=root',

  bindCredentials: 'secret',



  // and any other options supported by ldapjs

  timeout: 30000

})



async function main() {

  const person = await ldap.get('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

}

main().catch(e => console.error(e))

```

## Connect with environment variables

When working in docker, it's common to keep configuration in environment variables. In order to

make that easy, this library provides a convenient way to import a singleton pool created with the following

environment variables:

```

  LDAP_HOST

  LDAP_PORT // default is 389 or 636 if you set LDAP_SECURE

  LDAP_SECURE // set truthy to use ldaps protocol

  LDAP_DN // the DN with which to bind

  LDAP_PASS // the password for the bind DN

  LDAP_POOLSIZE (default: 5)

```

This way, connecting is very simple, and you don't have to worry about creating a singleton pool for the

rest of your codebase to import, because it's done for you:

```javascript

import ldap from 'ldap-async/client'



async function main() {

  const person = await ldap.get('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

}

main().catch(e => console.error(e))

```



## CommonJS imports

You must refer to `.default` when importing with `require`:

```javascript

const Ldap = require('ldap-async').default

// or the instance created with environment variables (see above)

const ldap = require('ldap-async/client').default

```

# Basic Usage

Convenience methods are provided that allow you to specify the kind of operation you are about

to do and the type of return data you expect.

## Querying

```javascript

const person = await ldap.get('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

console.log(person.toJSON()) // { givenName: 'John', ... }



const people = await ldap.search('ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', { scope: 'sub', filter: 'objectclass=person' })

console.log(people.map(p => p.toJSON())) // [{ givenName: 'John', ... }, { givenName: 'Mary', ... }]



// return full LdapEntry objects for members of a group and members of all subgroups

const people = await ldap.getMembers('cn=yourgroup,ou=groups,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

console.log(people.map(p => p.toJSON())) // [{ givenName: 'John', ... }, { givenName: 'Mary', ... }]

```

## Return object

In ldap-async v2.0 the return object changed to give you greater control over the return type you

want/expect. Now you get a special LdapEntry class with methods for getting the entry attributes:

```javascript

const entry = await ldap.get(... whatever ...)

entry.get('givenName') // 'John' - you can also use entry.one('givenName') or entry.first('givenName')

entry.all('givenName') // ['John']

entry.buffer('givenName') // Buffer.from('John', 'utf8')

entry.buffers('givenName') // [Buffer.from('John', 'utf8')]

```

If you want something more like the ldap-async v1.0 return object, use the `.toJSON()` method. You'll

get back an object with attribute names as the keys and the values will be a mixture of string and

string[]. Attributes with only one value will be `string`, attributes with multiple values will

be `string[]`. Attributes with at least one value that is not valid UTF-8 (usually binaries

like image data) will be base64 encoded strings.

## Writing

```javascript

// change the value of a single attribute on a record

await ldap.setAttribute('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'email', '[email protected]')



// change the value of multiple attributes in one round trip

await ldap.setAttributes('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', { email: '[email protected]', sn: 'Smith' })



// pushes value onto an array attribute unless it's already there

await ldap.pushAttribute('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'email', '[email protected]')



// remove a value from an array attribute (returns true without doing anything if value wasn't there)

await ldap.pullAttribute('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'email', ['[email protected]'])



// remove an attribute entirely

await ldap.removeAttribute('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'customAttr')



// add a full record

await ldap.add('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', { /* a person record */ })



// remove a full record

await ldap.remove('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')



// rename a record (in this example only the cn changes, the ou,dc entries are preserved)

await ldap.modifyDN('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'cn=yourself')



// special group membership functions

await ldap.addMember('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'cn=yourgroup,ou=groups,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

await ldap.removeMember('cn=you,ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', 'cn=yourgroup,ou=groups,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

```

## Escaping

When you construct LDAP search query strings, it's important to escape any input strings to prevent injection attacks. LDAP has two kinds of strings with different escaping requirements, so we provide a template literal helper for each.



For DN strings, use `ldap.dn`:

```javascript

const person = await ldap.get(ldap.dn`cn=${myCN},ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com`)

```

For filter strings, use `ldap.filter`:

```javascript

const people = await ldap.search('ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', {

  scope: 'sub',

  filter: ldap.filter`givenName=${n}`

})

```

More complex queries may also use `ldap.filter` inside a map function, such as this one that finds many users by their names:

```javascript

const people = await ldap.search('ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', {

  scope: 'sub',

  filter: `(|${myNames.map(n => ldap.filter`(givenName=${n})`).join('')})`

})

```

## Filter helpers

For convenience, a few helper functions are provided to help you construct LDAP filters: `in`, `any`, `all`, and `anyall`. These functions take care of escaping for you.

* Everyone named John or Mary:

  ```javascript

  ldap.in(['John', 'Mary'], 'givenName')

  // => '(|(givenName=John)(givenName=Mary))

  ```

* Everyone named John or with the surname Smith

  ```javascript

  ldap.any({ givenName: 'John', sn: 'Smith' })

  // => '(|(givenName=John)(sn=Smith))

  ```

* Everyone named John Smith

  ```javascript

  ldap.all({ givenName: 'John', sn: 'Smith' })

  // => '(&(givenName=John)(sn=Smith))

  ```

* Everyone named John Smith or Mary Scott

  ```javascript

  ldap.anyall([{ givenName: 'John', sn: 'Smith' }, { givenName: 'Mary', sn: 'Scott' }])

  // => '(|(&(givenName=John)(sn=Smith))(&(givenName=Mary)(sn=Scott)))'

  ```

Note that `any`, `all` and `anyall` can accept an optional `wildcard` parameter if you want users to be able to provide wildcards. Other special characters like parentheses will be properly escaped.

* Everyone named John whose surname starts with S

  ```javascript

  ldap.all({ givenName: 'John', sn: 'S*' }, true)

  // => '(&(givenName=John)(sn=S*))

  ```

## ldapjs 3.0 Filters API

ldapjs added a "Filters API" in their 3.0 version that helps you create (and parse) filters. You're free to use that instead of the

filter helpers provided by ldap-async. Just make a filter object with their Filters API and give it to any appropriate method in ldap-async:

```javascript

const people = await ldap.search('ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', {

  scope: 'sub',

  filter: new EqualityFilter({ attribute: 'givenName', value: n })

})

```

For more information, see the [Filters API documentation](http://ldapjs.org/filters.html).

# Advanced Usage

## Streaming

To avoid using too much memory on huge datasets, we provide a `stream` method that performs the same as `search` but returns a node `Readable`. It is recommended to use the async iterator pattern:

```javascript

const stream = ldap.stream('ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com', {

  scope: 'sub',

  filter: ldap.in(myNames, 'givenName')

})

for await (const person of stream) { /* do some work on the person */ }

```

`for await` is very safe, as `break`ing the loop or throwing an error inside the loop will clean up the stream appropriately.



Since `.stream()` returns a `Readable` in object mode, you can easily do other things with

it like `.pipe()` it to another stream processor. When using the stream without `for await`, you must call `stream.destroy()` if you do not want to finish processing it and carefully use `try {} finally {}` to destroy it in case your code throws an error. Failure to do so will leak a connection from the pool.



There is also a `getMemberStream` function which performs the same as `getMembers`:

```javascript

const people = await ldap.getMemberStream('cn=yourgroup,ou=groups,dc=yourdomain,dc=com')

for await (const p of people) { /* do some work on the person */ }

```



## Binary data

Some LDAP services store binary data as properties of records (e.g. user profile photos). In ldap-async v1.0,

we provided a `_raw` property to work around this, but in v2.0 we support it with the new `LdapEntry` return

object. So now you simply have to ask for the `Buffer` for the attribute in question.



For example, to convert profile photos to data URLs, you could do something like this:



```typescript

const user = await ldap.get(userDn)

const convertedUser = {

  ...user.toJSON(),

  jpegPhoto: `data:image/jpeg;base64,${user.buffer('jpegPhoto').toString('base64')}`,

}

```



## Close the pool

Generally you want to let the pool do its thing for the entire life of your process, but if you are sure you're done with it, you can call `await client.close()` and it will wait for all existing requests to finish, then empty the pool so that everything can be garbage collected. The pool is still valid, so if you make another request, the pool will open back up and work normally.



## Typescript

This library is written in typescript and provides its own types. For added convenience, methods that return

objects will accept a generic so that you can specify the return type you expect from the `.toJSON()` method:

```typescript

interface LDAPPerson {

  cn: string

  givenName: string

}

const person = ldap.get(ldap.dn`cn=${myCN},ou=people,dc=yourdomain,dc=com`)

// person.toJSON() will be an LDAPPerson

```