Summary

We have seen that LDAP servers can be relied on to provide authentication and authorization information, as well as rich user profile information when requested. In this chapter, we covered the LDAP terminology and concepts, and how LDAP directories might be commonly organized to work with Spring Security. We also explored the configuration of both standalone (embedded) and external LDAP servers from a Spring Security configuration file.

We covered the authentication and authorization of users against LDAP repositories, and their subsequent mapping to Spring Security actors. We also saw the differences in authentication schemes, password storage, and security mechanisms in LDAP, and how they are treated in Spring Security. We also learned to map user detail attributes from the LDAP directory to the UserDetails object for rich information exchange between LDAP and the Spring-enabled application. We also explained bean configuration for LDAP and the pros and cons of this approach...