How to do a custom LDAP query?

Question

Hi,

For a specific requirement - a request must be approved by the requester's manager - I need to retrieve a field from Active Directory. The name of the field is easy enough, it's "manager". But I cannot find anywhere how to do a query to actually fetch that particular field for a given user.

Is this possible in the first place? The JavaDocs are a dead end, and searching with Google loads to nothing as well. Writing a custom field is not a problem, nor is accessing classes such as ComponentAccessor, UserManager or Directory. But for the actually query, I'm lost.

Thanks,

- Peter

Peter Korsten · Answer

I've solved it (of sorts) by getting the connection properties from the user's directory object and creating a JNDI "Context" object. Obviously, this implies a new LDAP connection every time the field is displayed, but to be honest I wouldn't know a more elegant solution.

Peter Korsten · Answer

OK, thanks, but how exactly are you performing the query? My question was perhaps a bit unclear: what I'm trying to get is some sort of handle to a directory that I can query directly.

What I've found so far is that you can get the attributes of the Directory object for a user, which contains the LDAP/AD connection specifics, and I could use those in a JNDI query. But that seems like a somewhat inelegant solution.

Basically, to find a way to get the LDAP connection object that JIRA itself is using.

Thanks,

- Peter

Stephen Gurnick · Answer

It is possible to write a LDAP query against Active Directory - I am doing this to retrieve a subset of available groups such that only those are available to Confluece/JIRA.

I suggest looking at this page from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa746475%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

However, I'm not sure if it is possible to do this outside of the User Directories administration area.