On the SitePoint PHP blog today Matthew Setter has written up a tutorial sharing the essentials of PHP with LDAP. He shows how to connect PHP to this industry standard technology and effectively query, update and delete information.

Ever wanted a simple way to store address book style information and network information actually next to any kind of ordered information? If so, then there’s a technology which has been around since 1993, one which despite not having the cool factor of such technologies as Node.js and Go, allows you to do exactly this. It’s called LDAP!

He starts off the tutorial by explaining a bit about what LDAP is (and isn't) for those not familiar with it. He covers some of the basic terminology, pointing you other articles if you need more than just his brief overview. Then he helps you get an LDAP server installed locally (using a package manager, apt-get) and how to verify the install is working correctly. From there he shows how to populate a few records and verify they exist. Following this, he gets to the PHP part of things, showing how to use the Zend Framework v2 Zend/Ldap component to access the server, query records and update/delete them easily.

On the "Make Me Pulse" blog today Ludovic Hindryckx has a bit of code he's shared to let you connect PHP to an Active Directory server (via an LDAP connection).

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.

On the ThinkPHP blog today, there's a new post from Stephanie Ehrling about simulating an LDAP connection and data request to PHP with LDIF.

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.

The Bakery has six new articles/tutorials posted today on subjects ranging from working with LDAP out to Access Control:

• 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).

The Bakery has six new articles/tutorials posted today on subjects ranging from working with LDAP out to Access Control:

• 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).

Jan Schneider has a new blog post today concerning the acceptance of three projects (based on the Horde Project) into the Google "Summer of Code" program for this year.

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.

Jan Schneider has a new blog post today concerning the acceptance of three projects (based on the Horde Project) into the Google "Summer of Code" program for this year.

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.