ldap-ui

Fast and versatile LDAP editor

This is a minimal web interface for LDAP directories. Docker images for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64/v8 are available.

Features:

• Directory tree view
• Entry creation / modification / deletion
• LDIF import / export
• Image support for the jpegPhoto and thumbnailPhoto attributes
• Schema aware
• Simple search (configurable)
• Asynchronous LDAP backend with decent scalability
• Available as Docker image

The app always requires authentication, even if the directory permits anonymous access. User credentials are validated through a simple bind on the directory (SASL is not supported). What a particular user can see (and edit) is governed entirely by directory access rules. The app shows the directory contents, nothing less and nothing more.

Usage

Environment variables

LDAP access is controlled by the following optional environment variables, possibly from a .env file:

• LDAP_URL: Connection URL, defaults to ldap:///.

• BASE_DN: Search base, e.g. dc=example,dc=org.

• SCHEMA_DN: # DN to obtain the directory schema, e.g. cn=subSchema.

• LOGIN_ATTR: User name attribute, defaults to uid.

• USE_TLS: Enable TLS, defaults to true for ldaps connections. Set it to a non-empty string to force STARTTLS on ldap connections.

• INSECURE_TLS: Do not require a valid server TLS certificate, defaults to false, implies USE_TLS.

if BASE_DN or SCHEMA_DN are not provided explicitly, auto-detection from the root DSE is attempted. For this to work, the root DSE must be readable anonymously, e.g. with the following ACL line for OpenLDAP:

access to dn.base="" by * read

For finer-grained control, see settings.py.

Docker

For the impatient: Run it with

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:5000:5000 \
    -e LDAP_URL=ldap://your.openldap.server/

For the even more impatient: Start a demo with

docker compose up -d

and go to http://localhost:5000/. You are automatically logged in as Fred Flintstone.

Pip

Install the python-ldap dependency with your system's package manager. Otherwise, Pip will try to compile it from source and this will likely fail because it lacks a development environment.

Then install ldap-ui in a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv --system-site-packages venv
. venv/bin/activate
pip3 install ldap-ui

Possibly after a shell rehash, it is available as ldap-ui:

Usage: ldap-ui [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -b, --base-dn TEXT              LDAP base DN. Required unless the BASE_DN
                                  environment variable is set.
  -h, --host TEXT                 Bind socket to this host.  [default:
                                  127.0.0.1]
  -p, --port INTEGER              Bind socket to this port. If 0, an available
                                  port will be picked.  [default: 5000]
  -l, --log-level [critical|error|warning|info|debug|trace]
                                  Log level. [default: info]
  --version                       Display the current version and exit.
  --help                          Show this message and exit.

Development

Prerequisites:

• GNU make
• node.js LTS version with NPM
• Python3 ≥ 3.7
• pip3
• python-ldap; To compile the Python module:
  • Debian / Ubuntu: apt-get install libsasl2-dev python-dev libldap2-dev libssl-dev
  • RedHat / CentOS: yum install python-devel openldap-devel

ldap-ui consists of a Vue frontend and a Python backend that roughly translates a subset of the LDAP protocol to a stateless ReST API.

For the frontend, npm run build assembles everything in backend/ldap_ui/statics.

Review the configuration in settings.py. It is short and mostly self-explaining. Most settings can (and should) be overridden by environment variables or settings in a .env file; see env.demo or env.example.

The backend can be run locally with make, which will also install dependencies and build the frontend if needed.

Notes

Authentication methods

The UI always uses a simple bind operation to authenticate with the LDAP directory. How the bind DN is obtained from a given user name depends on a combination of OS environment variables, possibly from a .env file:

1. Search by some attribute. By default, this is the uid, which can be overridden by the environment variable LOGIN_ATTR, e.g. LOGIN_ATTR=cn.
2. If the environment variable BIND_PATTERN is set, then no search is performed. Login with a full DN can be configured with BIND_PATTERN=%s, which for example allows to login as user cn=admin,dc=example,dc=org. If a partial DN like BIND_PATTERN=%s,dc=example,dc=org is configured, the corresponding login would be cn=admin. If a specific pattern like BIND_PATTERN=cn=%s,dc=example,dc=org is configured, the login name is just admin.
3. If security is no concern, then a fixed BIND_DN and BIND_PASSWORD can be set in the environment. This is for demo purposes only, and probably a very bad idea if access to the UI is not restricted by any other means.

Searching

Search uses a (configurable) set of criteria (cn, gn, sn, and uid) if the query does not contain =. Wildcards are supported, e.g. f* will match all cn, gn, sn, and uid starting with f. Additionally, arbitrary attributes can be searched with an LDAP filter specification, for example sn=F*.

Caveats

• The software works with OpenLdap using simple bind. Other directories have not been tested much, although 389 DS works to some extent.
• SASL authentication schemes are presently not supported.
• Passwords are transmitted as plain text. The LDAP server is expected to hash them (OpenLdap 2.4 does). I strongly recommend to expose the app through a TLS-enabled web server.
• HTTP Basic Authentication is triggered unless the AUTHORIZATION request variable is already set by some upstream HTTP server.

Q&A

• Q: Why are some fields not editable?
  • A: The RDN of an entry is read-only. To change it, rename the entry with a different RDN, then change the old RDN and rename back. To change passwords, click on the question mark icon on the right side. Binary fields (as per schema) are read-only. You do not want to modify them accidentally.
• Q: Why did you write this?
  • A: PHPLdapAdmin has not seen updates for ages. I needed a replacement, and wanted to try Vue.

Acknowledgements

The Python backend uses Starlette. The UI is built with Vue.js and Tailwind CSS. Kudos to the authors of these elegant frameworks!