35.18. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters #
If libpq has been compiled with LDAP support (option
for --with-ldap
configure
) it is possible to retrieve connection options like host
or dbname
via LDAP from a central server. The advantage is that if the connection parameters for a database change, the connection information doesn't have to be updated on all client machines.
LDAP connection parameter lookup uses the connection service file pg_service.conf
(see Section 35.17). A line in a pg_service.conf
stanza that starts with ldap://
will be recognized as an LDAP URL and an LDAP query will be performed. The result must be a list of keyword = value
pairs which will be used to set connection options. The URL must conform to RFC 1959 and be of the form
ldap://[hostname
[:port
]]/search_base
?attribute
?search_scope
?filter
where hostname
defaults to localhost
and port
defaults to 389.
Processing of pg_service.conf
is terminated after a successful LDAP lookup, but is continued if the LDAP server cannot be contacted. This is to provide a fallback with further LDAP URL lines that point to different LDAP servers, classical keyword = value
pairs, or default connection options. If you would rather get an error message in this case, add a syntactically incorrect line after the LDAP URL.
A sample LDAP entry that has been created with the LDIF file
version:1 dn:cn=mydatabase,dc=mycompany,dc=com changetype:add objectclass:top objectclass:device cn:mydatabase description:host=dbserver.mycompany.com description:port=5439 description:dbname=mydb description:user=mydb_user description:sslmode=require
might be queried with the following LDAP URL:
ldap://ldap.mycompany.com/dc=mycompany,dc=com?description?one?(cn=mydatabase)
You can also mix regular service file entries with LDAP lookups. A complete example for a stanza in pg_service.conf
would be:
# only host and port are stored in LDAP, specify dbname and user explicitly [customerdb] dbname=customer user=appuser ldap://ldap.acme.com/cn=dbserver,cn=hosts?pgconnectinfo?base?(objectclass=*)