Importing LDAP Objects

Introduction

If you are looking to import LDAP users into your application, view this guide instead.

With LdapRecord-Laravel, you can easily import and synchronize LDAP objects into a database table using a given Eloquent model. This is useful for importing groups, memberships and more.

Getting Started

For this example, we will be importing LDAP groups into our applications database table groups.

Our groups table simply contains a name column, however to import LDAP objects into it, we must add two extra database columns:

For brevity, we will not be showing the creation of the groups database table migration.

Creating the Migration

Generate a migration to add these columns onto our groups table:

php artisan make:migration add_ldap_columns_to_groups_table

Then, we'll add the new required columns to the migration:

class AddLdapColumnsToGroupsTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('groups', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('guid')->unique()->nullable();
            $table->string('domain')->nullable();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('groups', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn(['guid', 'domain']);
        });
    }
}

After finishing setting up the above migration, make sure you run it:

php artisan migrate

Setting Up the Eloquent Model

For the importer to be able to properly interface with your Eloquent model, you must apply the following trait and interface onto your Eloquent model you are using to perform the import.

// app/Group.php

namespace App;

use LdapRecord\Laravel\LdapImportable;
use LdapRecord\Laravel\ImportableFromLdap;

class Group extends Authenticatable implements LdapImportable
{
    use ImportableFromLdap;

    // ...
}

Your model is now ready for importing.

Running the Import

Defining Sync Attributes

Prior to running the import, you must define a configuration array. This configuration array must contain an array of sync_attributes, that reference the database column (the key) and the LDAP attribute (the value):

$config = [
    'sync_attributes' => [
        'name' => 'cn'
    ],
];

As with importing LDAP users, you may also use an attribute handler if you require extra logic when setting database values from the object.

$config = ['sync_attributes' => \App\Ldap\AttributeHandler::class];

Performing the Import

To perform the import, you must use the LdapRecord\Laravel\Import\Synchronizer class.

This class accepts your Eloquent model class as the first parameter, and your configuration array into the second:

Important: An unsaved Eloquent model will be returned after running the synchronizer. This means you must call save() on the resulting model.

use App\Group as EloquentGroup;
use LdapRecord\Laravel\Import\Synchronizer;
use LdapRecord\Models\ActiveDirectory\Group as LdapGroup;

$config = [
    'sync_attributes' => [
        'name' => 'cn'
    ],
];

// Create the synchronizer.
$synchronizer = new Synchronizer(EloquentGroup::class, $config);

// Import each group from the directory.
foreach (LdapGroup::get() as $group) {
    $synchronizer->run($group)->save();
}

The above can easily be placed into a scheduled job if you'd prefer the import to be run in the background of your application.