Short example on escaping characters in search filters

Mark Craig

10.05.2012 c7d8663a2d05975e07f626c794c23d2ce566bb21

Short example on escaping characters in search filters

 opendj3/src/main/docbkx/admin-guide/chap-ldap-operations.xml

@@ -224,6 +224,45 @@
sn: Jensen</screen>
  </example>

  <example xml:id="escape-characters-in-filter">
   <title>Search: Escaping Search Filter Characters</title>

   <para><link xlink:href='http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4515'>RFC 4515:
   Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): String Representation
   of Search Filters</link> mentions a number of characters that you must
   handle with care when using them in search filters.</para>

   <itemizedlist>
    <para>For a filter like <literal>(attr=<replaceable
    >value</replaceable>)</literal>, the following list indicates characters
    that you must replace with a backslash ( <literal>\</literal> ) followed
    by two hexadecimal digits when using them as part of the
    <replaceable>value</replaceable> string.</para>
    <listitem>
     <para>Replace <literal>*</literal> with <literal>\2a</literal>.</para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>Replace <literal>(</literal> with <literal>\28</literal>.</para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>Replace <literal>)</literal> with <literal>\29</literal>.</para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>Replace <literal>\</literal> with <literal>\5c</literal>.</para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
     <para>Replace NUL (0x00) with <literal>\2a</literal>.</para>
    </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>

   <para>The following example shows a filter with escaped characters matching
   an actual value.</para>
   <screen>$ ldapsearch --port 1389 --baseDN dc=example,dc=com
 "(description=\28*\5c*\2a\29)" description
dn: uid=bjensen,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com
description: (A \great\ description*)</screen>
  </example>

  <example xml:id="extensible-match-search">
   <title>Search: List Active Accounts</title>