LEX Online Manual Content

Use in Filter Factory

This option can insert an attribute from the attribute list into the Filter Factory. So if you do know nothing about the Filter Factory, please get some information about it first. With the Use in Filter Factory option, you can quickly grab the attributes which you encounter in the directory and build LDAP filters with them.

An example: You browse through the object attributes of a certain group object and you see that a user is a member of that group:

An interesting attribute for an LDAP filter

Now you want to know all the other groups which this user is member of. Then you just select the regarding entry in the attribute list and use the option Tools - Use in Filter Factory. You see the LDAP Filter Editor dialog:

Creating an attribute filter

By the way, you can only use this option if you are in the attribute list and if only one single attribute is selected.

To understand the LDAP Filter Editor dialog completely, you should be familiar with LDAP Filters. This dialog is now automatically pre-filled with the correct syntax of the chosen attribute value. Depending on the attribute syntax, the Filter Editor dialog may have additional buttons to set the value, but these buttons are always available:

Op	You can set the operator for the LDAP filter value criteria here. The available operators depend on the syntax of the regarding attribute. The >= and <= operators for example are only valid for numeric values, but not for strings. LEX shows you automatically all the operators which are allowed in the given situation.
Global Search	Instead of building a complex LDAP filter in the Filter Factory, you can just grab one attribute here and do a quick global search with it. Global means that a directory search is started with the current filter string in the dialog, where the search base is the current LDAP root container of your connection.
Open Factory	This button opens the Filter Factory where the filter from this dialog is already inserted into the factory content.
OK	This button just sets the Filter Factory content according to the values in this dialog.
Cancel	This button aborts the operation without changing the content of the Filter Factory.

You can also choose whether you want to add the filter to the current Filter Factor content or if you want to replace the content with this new filter criterion. If you decide to add the new filter to the existing one, then you should choose the logical interconnection (AND or OR concatenation):

Adding the single filter to the factory

Using the context menu

Another, faster way to built the LDAP filter in the Filter Factory: Open the context menu directly in the attribute list (right mouse-click) and use the option Filter Display for this Attribute.

Open the filter editor with the context menu

Another Example: LDAP filter criteria combinations

Another example of a more complex filter building operation: You browse through the attributes and see that a object was created by certain user. So you use the Tools - Use in Filter Factory option for the creatorsName attribute to build a filter to see all other objects which are created by him.

Building filter for creators name

After that you realize that you want to see only the objects which were created this week by this user. So you click on the createTimestamp attribute and use the Tools - Use in Filter Factory option again, this time you change the timestamp attribute value and the operator so that the desired time period is filtered. To set the operator for a filter which applies to objects created AFTER a certain timestamp, change the logical operator:

Adjusting the logical LDAP filter operator

Then you change the timestamp value to a value which represents one week in the past:

Adjusting the timestamp value

The resulting filter looks like this:

Building filter for creation timestamp

If you deactivate the option Replace current filter in filter factory option now, you can look at your result in the filter factory by clicking the Open Factory button:

LDAP filter combination in the Filter Factory

Another Example: Quick check for existence of attributes

Another Example: You see that a user object in an Microsoft Exchange environment has the homeMDB attribute, this means that this user object has a mailbox on an Exchange Server (see the manual topic Famous Filters for more interesting filter examples). If you want to know all the other users that are also mail-enabled, you can select the attribute and open the attribute filter dialog again. Set the operator to 'exists':

Logical filter operator for existance

The resulting filter looks like this:

LDAP filter for existance check

With a click on the Global Search button, you get all your exchange mailbox users in the directory immediately!