Fljud 0.4 review

Fljud is a Jabber User Directory (JUD) that uses an LDAP directory for user information

License: MIT/X Consortium License File size: 0K Developer: Pete Birkinshaw

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Fljud is a Jabber User Directory (JUD) that uses an LDAP directory for user information. You may find Fljud to be very useful if you've already got a Jabber server using LDAP for account authentication and vcards.

Fljud can be used to replace your existing JUD, but can also be quickly adapted to present and edit other information from your LDAP directory using Jabber.

Here are some key features of "Fljud":
Configurable fields: You can easily display almost any attribute data from your LDAP directory for each user.
More capable searching: Search in any requested attribute, with a choice of AND or OR based search patterns.
LDAP updates: When a user changes their details in the JUD, their LDAP record is updated.
Configurable browsing: Users can be grouped into arbitrary, browsable folders. Groups can be based on any LDAP search criteria. This depends on Jabber client support.
Field/attribute locking: Fields can be locked so that their LDAP attribute's value cannot change, or cannot be removed.
Flexible configuration: Fljud can be used to provide Jabber access to other types of LDAP objects. Alternate XML based configuration files can be specified.
No XDB/JUD synchronisation problems: As both your authentication and JUD are using live LDAP records.

Limitations:
Fljud's speed is probably less than that of the default Jabber 1.4 JUD, but it should be fast enough for internal Jabber servers.
User accounts must already exist in the LDAP server and on the Jabber server.
The establised Jabber standards do not have any form field types other than simple text fields with single word labels. Fljud only supports this basic form type. Later versions of Fljud will support the new Jabber data/form features as they develop.
The flexible search feature does not now conform to new Jabber/XMPP standards.

Requirements:

An LDAP server, with a suitable account for Fljud to bind to.

A Jabber server. It is best if Fljud runs on the same server as the main Jabber daemon for your network.

Perl and various Perl modules, in particular:
Net::LDAP
Jabber::Connection
XML::Simple
Data::Dumper

A Linux, BSD or other UNIX system.