phpman > perldoc > Net::LDAP::Filter(3pm)

NAME
    Net::LDAP::Filter - representation of LDAP filters

SYNOPSIS
      use Net::LDAP::Filter;

      $filter = Net::LDAP::Filter->new( $filter_str );

DESCRIPTION
    The Net::LDAP::Filter object lets you directly manipulate LDAP filters without worrying about
    the string representation and all the associated escaping mechanisms.

CONSTRUCTOR
    new ( [ FILTER ] )
        Create a new object. If FILTER is given, parse it.

METHODS
    parse ( FILTER )
        Parse FILTER, updating the object to represent it.

    as_string
        Return the filter in text form.

    print ( [ FH ] )
        Print the text representation of the filter to FH, or the currently selected output handle
        if FH is not given.

    negate ( )
        Logically negate/invert the filter object so that it matches the opposite set of entries as
        the original.

        Instead of simply negating the text form by surrounding it with the not operator, the
        negation is done by recursively applying *De Morgan's law*.

        Here is an example:

         (|(&(cn=A)(cn=B))(|(!(cn=C))(cn=D)))

        gets negated to

         (&(|(!(cn=A))(!(cn=B)))(&(cn=C)(!(cn=D))))

FILTER SYNTAX
    Below is the syntax for a filter given in RFC 4515 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4515.txt

     filter       = "(" filtercomp ")"
     filtercomp   = and / or / not / item
     and          = "&" filterlist
     or           = "|" filterlist
     not          = "!" filter
     filterlist   = 1*filter
     item         = simple / present / substring / extensible
     simple       = attr filtertype value
     filtertype   = equal / approx / greater / less
     equal        = "="
     approx       = "~="
     greater      = ">="
     less         = "<="
     extensible   = attr [":dn"] [":" matchingrule] ":=" value
                    / [":dn"] ":" matchingrule ":=" value
     present      = attr "=*"
     substring    = attr "=" [initial] any [final]
     initial      = value
     any          = "*" *(value "*")
     final        = value
     attr         = AttributeDescription from Section 4.1.4 of RFC 4511
     matchingrule = MatchingRuleId from Section 4.1.8 of RFC 4511
     value        = AttributeValue from Section 4.1.5 of RFC 4511


     Special Character encodings
     ---------------------------
        *               \2a, \*
        (               \28, \(
        )               \29, \)
        \               \5c, \\
        NUL             \00

SEE ALSO
    Net::LDAP, Other online documentation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    This document is based on a document originally written by Russell Fulton
    <r.fulton AT auckland.nz>.

AUTHOR
    Graham Barr <gbarr AT pobox.com>

    Please report any bugs, or post any suggestions, to the perl-ldap mailing list
    <perl-ldap AT perl.org>.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 1997-2004 Graham Barr. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can
    redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.