The String Representation of LDAP Search Filters
draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-filter-02

Network Working Group                                        Tim Howes
INTERNET DRAFT                           Netscape Communications Corp.
OBSOLETES: RFC 1960                                           May 1997

            The String Representation of LDAP Search Filters
                 <draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-filter-02.txt>

1.  Status of this Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are  working  docu-
ments  of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its
working groups.  Note that other  groups  may  also  distribute  working
documents as Internet-Drafts.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum  of  six  months
and  may  be  updated,  replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material
or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.''

To learn the current status of  any  Internet-Draft,  please  check  the
``1id-abstracts.txt''  listing  contained in the Internet- Drafts Shadow
Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net  (Europe),
ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim).

2.  Abstract

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) [1] defines  a  network
representation  of  a search filter transmitted to an LDAP server.  Some
applications may find it useful to have a  common  way  of  representing
these  search filters in a human-readable form.  This document defines a
human-readable string format for representing LDAP search filters.

This document replaces RFC 1960, extending the string LDAP filter defin-
ition  to include support for LDAP version 3 extended match filters, and
including support for representing  the  full  range  of  possible  LDAP
search filters.

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RFC DRAFT                                                       May 1997

3.  LDAP Search Filter Definition

An LDAPv3 search filter is defined in Section 4.5.1 of [1] as follows:

     Filter ::= CHOICE {
             and                [0] SET OF Filter,
             or                 [1] SET OF Filter,
             not                [2] Filter,
             equalityMatch      [3] AttributeValueAssertion,
             substrings         [4] SubstringFilter,
             greaterOrEqual     [5] AttributeValueAssertion,
             lessOrEqual        [6] AttributeValueAssertion,
             present            [7] AttributeDescription,
             approxMatch        [8] AttributeValueAssertion,
             extensibleMatch    [9] MatchingRuleAssertion
     }

     SubstringFilter ::= SEQUENCE {
             type    AttributeDescription,
             SEQUENCE OF CHOICE {
                     initial        [0] LDAPString,
                     any            [1] LDAPString,
                     final          [2] LDAPString
             }
     }

     AttributeValueAssertion ::= SEQUENCE {
             attributeDesc   AttributeDescription,
             attributeValue  AttributeValue
     }

     MatchingRuleAssertion ::= SEQUENCE {
             matchingRule    [1] MatchingRuleID OPTIONAL,
             type            [2] AttributeDescription OPTIONAL,
             matchValue      [3] AssertionValue,
             dnAttributes    [4] BOOLEAN DEFAULT FALSE
     }

     AttributeDescription ::= LDAPString

     AttributeValue ::= OCTET STRING

     MatchingRuleID ::= LDAPString

     AssertionValue ::= OCTET STRING

     LDAPString ::= OCTET STRING

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RFC DRAFT                                                       May 1997

where the LDAPString above is limited to the UTF-8 encoding of  the  ISO
10646 character set [4].  The AttributeDescription is a string represen-
tation of the attribute description and is defined in [1].  The Attribu-
teValue  and  AssertionValue  OCTET STRING have the form defined in [2].
The Filter is encoded for transmission over a network  using  the  Basic
Encoding Rules defined in [3], with simplifications described in [1].

4.  String Search Filter Definition

The string representation of an LDAP search filter  is  defined  by  the
following  grammar,  following  the  ABNF  notation defined in [5].  The
filter format uses a prefix notation.

     filter     = "(" filtercomp ")"
     filtercomp = and / or / not / item
     and        = "&" filterlist
     or         = "|" filterlist
     not        = "!" filter
     filterlist = 1*filter
     item       = simple / present / substring / extensible
     simple     = attr filtertype value
     filtertype = equal / approx / greater / less
     equal      = "="
     approx     = "~="
     greater    = ">="
     less       = "<="
     extensible = attr [":dn"] [":" matchingrule] ":=" value
                  / [":dn"] ":" matchingrule ":=" value
     present    = attr "=*"
     substring  = attr "=" [initial] any [final]
     initial    = value
     any        = "*" *(value "*")
     final      = value
     attr       = AttributeDescription from Section 4.1.5 of [1]
     matchingrule = MatchingRuleId from Section 4.1.9 of [1]
     value      = AttributeValue from Section 4.1.6 of [1]

The attr, matchingrule, and value constructs are  as  described  in  the
corresponding section of [1] given above.

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RFC DRAFT                                                       May 1997

If a value should contain any of the following characters

        Character       ASCII value
        ---------------------------
        *               0x2a
        (               0x28
        )               0x29
        \               0x5c
        NUL             0x00

the character must be encoded as  the  backslash  '\'  character  (ASCII
0x5c)  followed  by  the  two  hexadecimal digits representing the ASCII
value of the encoded character. The case of the two  hexadecimal  digits
is not significant.

This simple escaping mechanism eliminates filter-parsing ambiguities and
allows any filter that can be represented in LDAP to be represented as a
NUL-terminated string. Other characters besides the  ones  listed  above
may  be  escaped using this mechanism, for example, non-printing charac-
ters.

For example, the filter checking whether the "cn" attribute contained  a
value  with  the  character  "*"  anywhere in it would be represented as
"(cn=*\2a*)".

Note that although both the substring and  present  productions  in  the
grammar above can produce the "attr=*" construct, this construct is used
only to denote a presence filter.

5.  Examples

This section gives a few examples of search filters written  using  this
notation.

     (cn=Babs Jensen)
     (!(cn=Tim Howes))
     (&(objectClass=Person)(|(sn=Jensen)(cn=Babs J*)))
     (o=univ*of*mich*)

The following examples illustrate the use of extensible matching.

     (cn:1.2.3.4.5:=Fred Flintstone)
     (sn:dn:2.4.6.8.10:=Barney Rubble)
     (o:dn:=Ace Industry)
     (:dn:2.4.6.8.10:=Dino)

The second example illustrates the use of the ":dn" notation to indicate
that  matching rule "2.4.6.8.10" should be used when making comparisons,

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RFC DRAFT                                                       May 1997

and that the attributes of an entry's distinguished name should be  con-
sidered part of the entry when evaluating the match.

The third example denotes an equality match, except that  DN  components
should be considered part of the entry when doing the match.

The fourth example is a filter that should be applied to  any  attribute
supporting  the  matching rule given (since the attr has been left off).
Attributes supporting the matching rule contained in the DN should  also
be considered.

The following examples illustrate the use of the escaping mechanism.

     (o=Parens R Us \28for all your parenthetical needs\29)
     (cn=*\2A*)
     (filename=C:\5cMyFile)
     (bin=\00\00\00\04)
     (sn=Lu\c4\8di\c4\c7)

The first example shows the use of the escaping mechanism  to  represent
parenthesis  characters.  The  second  shows how to represent a "*" in a
value, preventing it from being interpreted as  a  substring  indicator.
The third illustrates the escaping of the backslash character.

The fourth example shows a filter  searching  for  the  four-byte  value
0x00000004,  illustrating the use of the escaping mechanism to represent
arbitrary data, including NUL characters.

The final example illustrates the  use  of  the  escaping  mechanism  to
represent various non-ASCII UTF-8 characters.

6.  Security Considerations

This memo describes a string  representation  of  LDAP  search  filters.
While the representation itself has no known security implications, LDAP
search filters do. They  are  interpreted  by  LDAP  servers  to  select
entries  from which data is retrieved.  LDAP servers should take care to
protect the data they maintain from unauthorized access.

7.  References

[1]  Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3), M. Wahl, T.  Howes,  S.
     Kille,   Internet   Draft   draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-protocol-04.txt,
     March, 1997.

[2]  Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (v3): Attribute Syntax Defin-
     itions,  M.  Wahl,  A. Coulbeck, T. Howes, S. Kille, Internet Draft
     draft-ietf-asid-ldapv3-attributes-04.txt, March, 1997.

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RFC DRAFT                                                       May 1997

[3]  Specification of ASN.1 encoding rules: Basic, Canonical,  and  Dis-
     tinguished Encoding Rules, ITU-T Recommendation X.690, 1994.

[4]  UTF-8, a transformation format of Unicode and ISO  10646,  F.  Yer-
     geau, draft-yergeau-utf8-rev-00.txt, April, 1997.

[5]  Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages, D. Crocker,
     RFC 822, August, 1982.

8.  Author's Address

   Tim Howes
   Netscape Communications Corp.
   501 E. Middlefield Road
   Mountain View, CA 94043
   USA
   +1 415 937-3419
   howes@netscape.com

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