Active Directory, 3rd Edition

Understanding Search Filters

When you use the LDAP dialect with the ADSI OLE DB provider to conduct a search, you must use an LDAP search filter to specify your search criteria. In a simple case, (objectclass=user) would be used to select every object with the user objectClass under the search base. You can in fact use a filter to match the presence of a value (or not) for any attribute of an object. This enables you to create powerful searches with complex criteria. For example, you can search for any group object that has a certain user as a member and that has a description matching a certain substring.

Tip

Filters must follow the format specified in RFC 2254. You can download RFC 2254 from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2254.txt.

Although filters let you conduct powerful searches, working with them can seem complex because of the format used, known as prefix notation. To make it easier to understand, we have divided the discussion of filters into two parts: items within a filter and items connecting filters.

Items Within a Filter

Within a filter, you can have three types of items :

Operators

A filter can include one of three operators . The equal-to (=) operator checks for exact equivalence. An example is (name=janet). The greater-than-or-equal-to (>=) and less-than-or-equal-to (<=) operators check for compliance with a range. Examples are (size>=5) and (size<=20).

Tip

The equal-to operator can be modified to specify a bitwise comparison. The format of the filter is attribute:matching_rule_oid:=value. ...