The LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) is used to represent LDAP entries in a simple text format. The basic form of an entry is as follows:
[id] dn: distinguished name attrtype: attrvalue attrtype: attrvalue ...id is the optional entry ID (a positive decimal number). Normally, you would not supply the id, allowing the database creation tools to do that for you. The ldbmcat program, however, produces an LDIF format that includes id so that new indexes created will be consistent.
A line may be continued by starting the next line with a single space or tab character. For example:
dn: cn=Liam Q Antbear, o=Antbear, Lucid & P
opp, c=US
Multiple attribute values are specified on separate lines, as follows:
cn: Liam Q Antbear cn: Liam AntbearIf an attrvalue contains a non-printing character, or begins with a space or a colon (:), the attrtype is followed by a double colon and the value is encoded in base 64 notation. For example, the value `` begins with a space'' would be encoded like this:
cn:: IGJlZ2lucyB3aXRoIGEgc3BhY2U=Multiple entries within the same LDIF file are separated by blank lines. The following is an example of an LDIF file containing three entries:
dn: cn=Liam Q Antbear, o=Antbear, Lucid & P
opp, c=US
cn: Liam Q Antbear
cn: Liam Antbear
objectclass: person
sn: Antbear
dn: cn=B O Lucid, o=Antbear, Lucid & P
opp, c=US
cn: B O Lucid
cn: B Lucid
objectclass: person
sn: Lucid
dn: cn=Calypso E Popp, o=Antbear, Lucid & P
opp, c=US
cn: Calypso E Popp
cn: Calypso Popp
objectclass: person
sn: Popp
jpegPhoto:: /9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAAAAAQABAAD/2wBDABALD
A4MChAODQ4SERATGCgaGBYWGDEjJR0oOjM9PDkzODdASFxOQ
ERXRTc4UG1RV19iZ2hnPk1xeXBkeFxlZ2P/2wBDARESEhgVG
...
Note that the jpegPhoto in Calypso E Popp's entry is encoded
using base 64. The ldif program (described in
``The index-generation tools'')
can be used to produce the LDIF format.
Note also that trailing spaces are not trimmed from values in an LDIF file, nor are multiple internal spaces compressed.