ActiveLDAP in Scala : LDAP on the JVM, in a shell !

Update: typos only

Until a really recent time, LDAP in the JVM, trougth JNDI API, was a nightmare of usability. Just connecting to an LDAP directory with a simple login/pass was worth a dozen lines of really unatural code (and I'm almost not exagering)

Hopefully, the situation is evolving, and there is several projects willing to provide a better LDAP SDK on the JVM.

Among them, there is UnboundId's one. I started to play with it, and it's quite delighting to be able to use a good API to do your work !

So it gives me an idea : how this SDK could be pimped thanks to Scala to be used in command lines, in a ruby ActiveLDAP fashion ?

And things are coming along really well. It's just a start, but this is an example of a Scala REPL session with my version of Scala ActiveLDAP :

scala> import test.activeldap._
import test.activeldap._

scala> import LdapFilter._
import LdapFilter._

scala> val p = new SimpleAuthLCP(baseDn = "dc=example,dc=org",authDn = 
"cn=admin", authPw = "secret pass")
p: test.activeldap.SimpleAuthLCP = [cn=admin@localhost:389 (base: 
dc=example,dc=org) by password authentication]

scala> val users = new MetaActiveEntry(prefix = "ou=people",  
rdn = "uid" , classes = Set("top","person","organizationalPerson","inetOrgPerson"), 
provider = p )
users: test.activeldap.MetaActiveEntry = test.activeldap.MetaActiveEntry@c85a33

scala> val user = users.find()(0)
user: test.activeldap.ActiveEntry = uid=42,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org

scala> user.details
res28: java.lang.String = Entry(dn='uid=42,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org', 
attributes={Attribute(name=objectClass, values={'inetOrgPerson', 
'organizationalPerson', 'person', 'top'}), 
Attribute(name=sn, values={'Bar'}), Attribute(name=cn, values={'Foo'}), 
Attribute(name=mail, values={'foo@bar.com'}), Attribute(name=uid, values={'42'})})

scala> user("uid") = "43"

scala> user.save

scala> users.find()
res31: Seq[test.activeldap.ActiveEntry] = ArrayBuffer(uid=42,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org,
uid=43,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org)

scala> user("mail") = Seq("foo@bar.com","foo_bar@bar.com")

scala> user.save

scala> users.find(EQ("uid","43"))(0).details
res34: java.lang.String = Entry(dn='uid=43,ou=people,dc=example,dc=org', 
attributes={Attribute(name=objectClass, values={'inetOrgPerson', 
'organizationalPerson', 'person', 'top'}), Attribute(name=sn, values={'Bar'}),
Attribute(name=cn, values={'Foo'}), Attribute(name=mail, values={'foo@bar.com', 
'foo_bar@bar.com'}), Attribute(name=uid, values={'43'})})

scala> user.delete

scala> users.find(EQ("uid","43"))
res36: Seq[test.activeldap.ActiveEntry] = ArrayBuffer()


scala> 

There is a really nice feature brought by Scala 2.8 for this kind of API: named and default parameters. I  used it in the previous sessions to define the connection: host and port were not provided (default to localhost:389),  but you can specify them if you need :

 scala> val p = new SimpleAuthLCP(
        | authDn = "cn=manager",
        | authPw = "secret password",
        | host = "an.other.host.com",
        | port = "1389",
        | baseDn = "dc=company,dc=com"
        | )

It's just a begining, and there is a lot of other nice features from Ruby ActiveLDAP that could be added...