Unable to connect to Active Directory in Spring Boot application with "'userDn' not set" message

Question

everyone. I am trying to write a Spring Boot program that works with an Active Directory server (for modification, not authentication), but I can't get the program to connect to it. Whatever I do, it shows the following message:

o.s.l.c.support.AbstractContextSource    : Property 'userDn' not set - anonymous context will be used for read-write operations

This is wrong because the AD server does not accept anonymous connections.

Here is my complete build.gradle file.

plugins {
  id 'org.springframework.boot' version '2.4.4'
  id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.0.11.RELEASE'
  id 'groovy'
}

group = 'edu.sunyjcc.gateway'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = '1.8'

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
  implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter'
  implementation 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy'
  implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-ldap'
  testImplementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test'
}

test {
  useJUnitPlatform()
}

I define a bean for the mydomainLdapTemplate in src\main\resources\applicationContext.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:ldap="http://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
                           https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap 
                           https://www.springframework.org/schema/ldap/spring-ldap.xsd"
                           >
  <context:property-placeholder location="classpath:ldap.properties"/>

  <!-- <ldap:context-source id="mydomainContextSource" -->
  <!--                      userDn="${ldap.authentication.manager.userdn}" -->
  <!--                      username="${ldap.authentication.manager.username}" -->
  <!--                      password="${ldap.authentication.manager.password}" -->
  <!--                      url="${ldap.authentication.server.urls}" -->
  <!--                      base="${ldap.authentication.basedn}" /> -->

  <bean id="mydomainContextSource" class="org.springframework.ldap.core.support.LdapContextSource">
    <property name="pooled" value="false"/>
    <property name="urls">
      <bean class="org.springframework.util.StringUtils" factory-method="commaDelimitedListToSet">
        <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" value="${ldap.authentication.server.urls}"/>
      </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="userDn" value="${ldap.authentication.manager.userdn}"/>
    <!-- <property name="username" value="${ldap.authentication.manager.userdn}"/> -->
    <!-- <property name="username" value="${ldap.authentication.manager.username}"/> -->
    <property name="password" value="${ldap.authentication.manager.password}"/>

    <property name="baseEnvironmentProperties">
      <map>
        <entry key="com.sun.jndi.ldap.connect.timeout" value="${ldap.authentication.jndi.connect.timeout}" />
        <entry key="com.sun.jndi.ldap.read.timeout" value="${ldap.authentication.jndi.read.timeout}" />
        <entry key="java.naming.security.authentication" value="${ldap.authentication.jndi.security.level}" />
      </map>
    </property>
  </bean>


   <ldap:ldap-template id="mydomainLdapTemplate"
                       ignore-partial-result="true"
                       context-source-ref="mydomainContextSource"/>

</beans>

I've tried switching between the userdn and username (in src\main\resources\ldap.properties), but neither works.

ldap.authentication.manager.userdn=cn=myacct,dc=mydomain,dc=sunyjcc,dc=edu
[email protected]

I've also tried switching between username and userDn in the bean configuration, but nothing seems to work. Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?

ActiveDirectoryLdapAuthenticationProvider does not seem to be an option, because I am not trying to authenticate, but to modify user records.

Thanks!

Ed.

Answer 1

Well, sometimes it's more important to ask the right question than to have the right answer. It turns out that Spring Boot will not automatically detect XML configuration, and you have to do that manually. That's easy to do by adding the @ImportResource annotation to your main class. You change this:

@SpringBootApplication
public class GatewayLdapApplication implements CommandLineRunner {

to this.

@SpringBootApplication
@ImportResource(["classpath*:applicationContext.xml"])
public class GatewayLdapApplication implements CommandLineRunner {

Now it connects beautifully.

Ed.