LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) has evolved into the most popular open directory access mechanism in recent times. Essentially this means that information can be stored in a hierarchical structure that is accessible from remote locations. Good examples of this are e-mail address lookup tables, white pages, and company structure information.
In this chapter we shall look into:
Concepts of directory services and LDAP in particular
LDAP terminology and the models of LDAP
Practical applications of LDAP
The API that PHP provides for programming LDAP client applications
A sample application to access an LDAP server using PHP's LDAP client API