LDAP_FIRST_ATTRIBUTE(3)

💅 LDAP_FIRST_ATTRIBUTE(3) — bestie's guide to walking an entry's attributes ✨

okay so. this is LDAP_FIRST_ATTRIBUTE(3), and it's genuinely one of those pages that looks scary and then turns out to be just... a loop. that's it. that's the whole vibe. you got an entry, you wanna see all its attributes, you loop. iconic. let's go 🦋

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🌸 LIBRARY

OpenLDAP LDAP — that's libldap, and you link it with -lldap. yes. one -l, then ldap. don't overthink it 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS

#include <ldap.h>

char *ldap_first_attribute(
     LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *entry, BerElement **berptr )

char *ldap_next_attribute(
     LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *entry, BerElement *ber )

int ldap_get_attribute_ber(
     LDAP *ld, LDAPMessage *entry, BerElement *ber,
     BerValue *attr, BerVarray *vals )

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💖 DESCRIPTION

so the three besties here — ldap_first_attribute(), ldap_next_attribute(), and ldap_get_attribute_ber() — are literally just your tools for stepping through the attributes of an LDAP entry. that's the whole job. no cap.

ldap_first_attribute() takes an entry as returned by ldap_first_entry(3) or ldap_next_entry(3), and hands you back a pointer to a character string holding the first attribute description in that entry. and then ldap_next_attribute() gives you the next attribute description. and then you call it again. and again. until you're done. main character loop energy, fr fr 🔥

it also returns, in berptr, a pointer to a BerElement that it allocated so it can keep track of where it currently is. you gotta pass that pointer into your subsequent ldap_next_attribute() calls — that's literally how it steps through the entry's attributes. and listen. the caller is solely responsible for freeing the BerElement pointed to by berptr when it's no longer needed, and the way you do that is by calling ber_free(3). when you call ber_free(3) in this specific instance, be sure the second argument is 0. not a vibe to skip that, iykyk 🙈

the attribute names that come back are suitable for inclusion in a call to ldap_get_values(3) when you want to retrieve the attribute's actual values. cute little pipeline, love that for you 💜

now — ldap_get_attribute_ber(). this one lets you iterate over all attributes in-place, without allocating memory to hold text for the attribute name or its values, if requested. the use case is similar to ldap_next_attribute() except that the attribute name gets returned into attr, and, if vals is non-NULL, the list of values is stored there. both of those point into the LDAP message and remain valid only while the entry is valid — so like, don't go holding onto them after the entry's gone, bestie 😭. the caller is still responsible for freeing vals with ldap_memfree(3), if it was used.

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💀 ERRORS

if something goes wrong, NULL is returned and the ld_errno field in the ld parameter gets set to indicate the error. for a rundown of possible error codes, go see ldap_error(3). slay, but the sad kind 🌈

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🎀 NOTES

okay this part matters so listen up 👑

ldap_first_attribute() and ldap_next_attribute() return dynamically allocated memory that must be freed by the caller via ldap_memfree(3). no skipping, that's a leak.

for ldap_get_attribute_ber(), only the actual vals pointer needs to be freed with ldap_memfree(3) — the other data is accounted for as part of ber. so like, don't double-free, that's not the move 💅

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🫶 SEE ALSO

• ldap(3)
• ldap_first_entry(3)
• ldap_get_values(3)
• ldap_error(3)

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⭐ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

OpenLDAP Software is developed and maintained by The OpenLDAP Project <http://www.openldap.org/>. and OpenLDAP Software is derived from the University of Michigan LDAP 3.3 Release. giving credit where it's due, periodt 💖

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and that's the page!! this one's from OpenLDAP 2.6.16, dated 2026/10/21 — go forth and iterate responsibly, bestie 🧚💜