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 and parse FILTER.

METHODS

parse ( FILTER )

Parse FILTER. The next call to ber will return this filter encoded.

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.

FILTER SYNTAX

Below is the syntax for a filter given in RFC-2254 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2254.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 4.1.5 of RFC-2251
matchingrule = MatchingRuleId from Section 4.1.9 of RFC-2251
value        = AttributeValue from Section 4.1.6 of RFC-2251


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.