---
title: "LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters"
id: libpq-ldap
pg_version: "20devel"
---

<a id="libpq-ldap"></a>

## 32.18. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters

If libpq has been compiled with LDAP support (option `--with-ldap` for `configure`) it is possible to retrieve connection options like `host` or `dbname` via LDAP from a central server. The advantage is that if the connection parameters for a database change, the connection information doesn't have to be updated on all client machines. 

LDAP connection parameter lookup uses the connection service file `pg_service.conf` (see [Section 32.17](libpq-pgservice.md)). A line in a `pg_service.conf` stanza that starts with `ldap://` will be recognized as an LDAP URL and an LDAP query will be performed. The result must be a list of `keyword = value` pairs which will be used to set connection options. The URL must conform to [RFC 1959](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1959) and be of the form ```
ldap://[hostname[:port]]/search_base?attribute?search_scope?filter
```

 where `hostname` defaults to `localhost` and `port` defaults to 389. 

Processing of `pg_service.conf` is terminated after a successful LDAP lookup, but is continued if the LDAP server cannot be contacted. This is to provide a fallback with further LDAP URL lines that point to different LDAP servers, classical `keyword = value` pairs, or default connection options. If you would rather get an error message in this case, add a syntactically incorrect line after the LDAP URL. 

A sample LDAP entry that has been created with the LDIF file 
version:1
dn:cn=mydatabase,dc=mycompany,dc=com
changetype:add
objectclass:top
objectclass:device
cn:mydatabase
description:host=dbserver.mycompany.com
description:port=5439
description:dbname=mydb
description:user=mydb_user
description:sslmode=require
 might be queried with the following LDAP URL: 
ldap://ldap.mycompany.com/dc=mycompany,dc=com?description?one?(cn=mydatabase)
 

You can also mix regular service file entries with LDAP lookups. A complete example for a stanza in `pg_service.conf` would be: 
# only host and port are stored in LDAP, specify dbname and user explicitly
[customerdb]
dbname=customer
user=appuser
ldap://ldap.acme.com/cn=dbserver,cn=hosts?pgconnectinfo?base?(objectclass=*)