Question

how can I authenticate from PHP using LDAP when I only have the SamAccountName and Password? Is there a way to bind with just SamAccountName and Password and without Distinguished Name. The only examples I have found assume you have the DN:

$server="XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX";
$dn = "cn=$username, "; 
$basedn="ou=users, ou=accounts, dc=domain, dc=com";

if (!($connect = ldap_connect($server))) { 
   die ("Could not connect to LDAP server"); 
} 

if (!($bind = ldap_bind($connect, "$dn" . "$basedn", $password))) {        
   die ("Could not bind to $dn"); 
} 

$sr = ldap_search($connect, $basedn,"$filter"); 
$info = ldap_get_entries($connect, $sr); 
$fullname=$info[0]["displayname"][0]; 
$fqdn=$info[0]["dn"]; 

Answer 1

Actually, the answer is that it depends on how the LDAP server was configured by the admin. You don’t always need a DN to authenticate to an LDAP server. In my particular case, even with the DN, I still couldn’t authenticate to the LDAP server. For the LDAP server I was trying to connect, it appears it was a Microsoft Domain, and so I could only authenticate with DOMAIN\user015 for user015 in DOMAIN where user015 is a SamAccountName and DOMAIN is the domain for that user. But I was able to authenticate.

Thank you for all the posts! Even if they weren’t the correct answer, they did help a lot!