BANGALORE, INDIA: A directory service like Active Directory in Windows is used to store users' information (name, address, e-mail, phone etc.) in a centralized location. Besides being used as directory, Active Directory is used for authentication in a network.

This means Active Directory can store login credentials (username and password) of users to allow them access applications and network resources. All applications will look up the directory service to validate the login credentials as opposed to storing the credentials in their own store (like their own databases). If a user wants to change his password, he only needs to change it at one place -at the Active Directory. Subsequently, he would be able to log on to all the applications with his new password.

Windows and Windows applications can easily integrate for Active Directory, after all Active Directory is the de facto directory services on Windows. What about an application developed in open source technology ? What about open source products ?

PHP is undoubtedly one of the most popular open source language for developing web applications. What if, you are writing a new PHP application for your organization and want that application to authenticate against an existing Active Directory server? The answer is to use a PHP library of functions called adLDAP (as explained later).

Next, numerous open source web applications (like blogs, content management systems) and enterprise applications (like CRM and mailing lists) have been written in PHP. In this article, we explain how to configure the following PHP based open source applications to authenticate against an Active Directory:

SugarCRM
(www.sugarcrm.com): A customer relationship management (CRM) system

Joomla
(www.joomla.org): A content management system

Wordpress
(www.wordpress.org): A blogging platform

phpBB
(www.phpbb.com): A web based discussion forum

PHPlist
(www.phplist.com): A newsletter/mailing list system