Using Controls

You can extend LDAP 3.0 operations by using controls. Controls may be sent to a server or returned to the client with any LDAP message. These controls are referred to as server controls.

The LDAP API also supports a client-side extension mechanism through the use of client controls. These controls affect the behavior of the LDAP API only and are never sent to a server. A common data structure, LDAPControl, is used to represent both types of controls.

Some LDAP API calls allocate an LDAPControl structure or a null-terminated array of LDAPControl structures. The following routines can be used to dispose of a single control or an array of controls:

• ldap_control_free
• ldap_controls_free

A set of controls that affect the entire session can be set using the ldap_set_option function. A list of controls can also be passed directly to some LDAP API calls such as ldap_search_ext, in which case any controls set for the session by means of ldap_set_option are ignored. Control lists are represented as a null-terminated array of pointers to LDAPControl structures.

See Also

Using the LDAP API

 Last updated on Friday, April 09, 2004

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