Category: Utility Scripts
Author/Contact Info mayaTheCat
Description: hi monks,

the following code recursively deletes a subtree from LDAP;
since, only leaf nodes can be deleted from ldap, this code, firstly, traverses the subtree, and then deletes the node in the reverse order it has been traversed.

if the port is other than the default port (389), it can be appended at the back of the server string, delimited with a ':';
e.g. if the server is ldapserver and the port is 889, then the following string works: 'ldapserver:889'.

if we do not want to stress the server, we can periodically pause the deletion for a while through the parameters $sleepPeriod and sleepDuration 

sub ldapRecursiveDelete {
    my ($server, $subtreeDN, $user, $password, $sleepPeriod, $sleepDur
+ation) = @_;
    my ($ldap, @toBeSearched, @toBeDeleted);

    return unless defined $subtreeDN;
    $sleepPeriod = 2000 unless defined $sleepPeriod;
    $sleepDuration = 1 unless defined $sleepDuration;

    use Net::LDAP;

    $ldap = Net::LDAP->new($server);

    if (defined $user && defined $password) {
        $ldap->bind($user, password => $password);
    } else {
        $ldap->bind;
    }

    @toBeSearched = ( $subtreeDN );

    while (@toBeSearched) {
        $_ = shift @toBeSearched;

        push @toBeDeleted, $_;

        for (
            (
                $ldap->search(
                    base => $_
                    , scope => 'one'
                    , filter => '(objectclass=*)'
                    , attrs => [ '1.1' ]
                )
            )->entries
        ) {
            push @toBeSearched, $_->dn;
        }
    }

    my $i = 0;
    while (@toBeDeleted) {
        $ldap->delete(pop @toBeDeleted);
        sleep $sleepDuration unless ++$i % $sleepPeriod;
    }

    $ldap->unbind;
}

Back to Code Catacombs