Apple's Address Book (10.2 and up) is a wonderful application. There's even LDAP technology built in, whatever that is. If you are using Mac OS X Server, you will know that through LDAP, your users can get each others' address data. Which is cool if you are with a lot of people on your campus, company, or home. But wouldn't it be more fun to have the address entries of 'outsiders' in there, too (but without making accounts for them on the Server)?
I stumbled on this php tool called phpLDAPadmin which allows me (amongst others) to add phonebook entries in the server once, so that all users can get to these addresses using Apple's Address Book! Caution! LDAP servers are vulnerable to outside peeking and changing; secure them wel!
- Get the phpLDAPadmin application
- Copy the tool into your webserver folder. (e.g. /Library -> WebServer -> Documents), renaming it to just phpldapadmin, or linking a shorter name to it; whatever suits you.
- Make a config.php file. (there's an example file which you can copy, rename and use.)
- Change the settings: an example:
$servers[$i]['name'] = 'server name'; $servers[$i]['host'] = 'url of the server'; $servers[$i]['base'] = 'base DN (e.g. dc=mydomain,dc=com)'; $servers[$i]['port'] = 389; $servers[$i]['auth_type'] = 'form or config, (form works best i think)'; $servers[$i]['login_dn'] = 'uid=myusername,cn=users,dc=mydomain,dc=com'; $servers[$i]['login_pass'] = 'my password';
The config example has a lot more comments, by the way. - Open up Safari, and surf to the webpage (http://server_url/phpldapadmin): if all is well, you will see the tree of your LDAP server
- Create new entry in this tree of type Organisational unit (ou), called for example "phonebook"
- Expand this Phonebook entry and now Create New entry, this time of type Address Book Entry. Repeat this for all your outsiders' records
- On any Mac in your network, open Address Book. Go to Preferences and select the LDAP tab.
- Add an LDAP entry, using the correct IP address, search base (depending on what you created in step six, ou=phonebook in my case), username and password.
- In the main window of the Address Book itself, click on Directories, and search for an entry you have previously entered, et voila!

