Today we are going to see how to make an authentication with PHP and an Active Directory LDAP (AD). [...] This code sample has been tested on a Windows 2k3 server.

The script calls the ldap_connect connect function with the user-submitted username and password and runs a bind (as the user) and searches for an account with the same name. If the information is found, it returns back to the $info variable to be checked.

An LDIF file is a simple text file that can contain those LDAP information, which can be separated into two groups. On the one hand, it can hold exported LDAP data in a text format. The other purpose of LDIF is to use it for importing data into an LDAP based system. So it can contain data to be imported or just commands that shall be processed. This is an important fact, because that opens the door to an interesting workaround.

This workaround allows you to import large amounts of data quickly and easy by dumping it into the server via a simple PHP script. The code is included in the post, but you'll need to have the binaries to get the LDIF and LDAP functionality working together.

• Sexy Cake with Krumo: Say Goodbye to print_r()
• Using ldap as a datasource: basic find example
• LDAP datasource for cakePHP
• Haml: Markup Haiku
• Real World Access Control

Check out The Bakery for more great articles and tutorials (as well as case studies on sites using the CakePHP framework).

Here's some of the details:

• Jonathan Burchfield's LDAP module for the Horde Application Framework to include full read/write functionality when completed
• Soumyadip Modak's development of a Horde bootable Live CD with a complete install of all Groupware modules Horde.
• Luciano Ramalho's "Wandering Books" application to allow anyone to turn their own library into a lending library quickly and easily.