Spring LDAP FAQ

Operational Attributes

How do I remove an operational attribute by using context.removeAttributeValue()?

By default, the DirContextAdapter reads only the visible attributes. This is because the operational attributes are returned by the server only if explicitly asked for, and there is no way for Spring LDAP to know the attributes for which to ask. This means that the DirContextAdapter is not populated with the operational attributes. Consequently, the removeAttributeValue does not have any effect (since, from the point of view of the DirContextAdapter, it was not there in the first place).

There are basically two ways to do this:

  • Use a search or lookup method that takes the attribute names as an argument, such as LdapTemplate#lookup(Name, String[], ContextMapper). Then use a ContextMapper implementation that returns the supplied DirContextAdapter in mapFromContext().

  • Use LdapTemplate#modifyAttributes(Name, ModificationItem[]) directly, manually building the ModificationItem array.