The Java Tutorials have been written for JDK 8. Examples and practices described in this page don't take advantage of improvements introduced in later releases and might use technology no longer available.
See Java Language Changes for a summary of updated language features in Java SE 9 and subsequent releases.
See JDK Release Notes for information about new features, enhancements, and removed or deprecated options for all JDK releases.
The simplest form of search requires that you specify the set of attributes that an entry must have and the name of the target context in which to perform the search.
The following code creates an attribute set matchAttrs, which has two attributes "sn" and "mail". It specifies that the qualifying entries must have a surname ("sn") attribute with a value of "Geisel" and a "mail" attribute with any value. It then invokes DirContext.search() to search the context "ou=People" for entries that have the attributes specified by matchAttrs.
// Specify the attributes to match
// Ask for objects that has a surname ("sn") attribute with
// the value "Geisel" and the "mail" attribute
// ignore attribute name case
Attributes matchAttrs = new BasicAttributes(true);
matchAttrs.put(new BasicAttribute("sn", "Geisel"));
matchAttrs.put(new BasicAttribute("mail"));
// Search for objects that have those matching attributes
NamingEnumeration answer = ctx.search("ou=People", matchAttrs);
You can then print the results as follows.
while (answer.hasMore()) {
SearchResult sr = (SearchResult)answer.next();
System.out.println(">>>" + sr.getName());
printAttrs(sr.getAttributes());
}
printAttrs()is similar to the code in the getAttributes() example that prints an attribute set.
Running
this example produces the following result.
# java SearchRetAll >>>cn=Ted Geisel attribute: sn value: Geisel attribute: objectclass value: top value: person value: organizationalPerson value: inetOrgPerson attribute: jpegphoto value: [B@1dacd78b attribute: mail value: Ted.Geisel@JNDITutorial.example.com attribute: facsimiletelephonenumber value: +1 408 555 2329 attribute: cn value: Ted Geisel attribute: telephonenumber value: +1 408 555 5252
The previous example returned all attributes associated with the entries that satisfy the specified query. You can select the attributes to return by passing search() an array of attribute identifiers that you want to include in the result. After creating the matchAttrs as shown previously, you also need to create the array of attribute identifiers, as shown next.
// Specify the ids of the attributes to return
String[] attrIDs = {"sn", "telephonenumber", "golfhandicap", "mail"};
// Search for objects that have those matching attributes
NamingEnumeration answer = ctx.search("ou=People", matchAttrs, attrIDs);
This example returns the attributes "sn", "telephonenumber", "golfhandicap", and "mail" of entries that have an attribute "mail" and have a "sn" attribute with the value "Geisel". This example produces the following result. (The entry does not have a "golfhandicap" attribute, so it is not returned.)
# java Search >>>cn=Ted Geisel attribute: sn value: Geisel attribute: mail value: Ted.Geisel@JNDITutorial.example.com attribute: telephonenumber value: +1 408 555 5252