If the object does not have an attribute specified, the directory will ignore the nonexistent attribute and return those requested attributes that the object does have.

A directory might return more attributes than was requested (see Attribute Type Names in the class description), but is not allowed to return arbitrary, unrelated attributes.

See also Operational Attributes in the class description.
Returns: the requested attributes; never null
Parameters:
- name - the name of the object from which to retrieve attributes
- attrIds - the identifiers of the attributes to retrieve. null indicates that all attributes should be retrieved; an empty array indicates that none should be retrieved.
Throws:
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered

This method returns the root of the schema information tree that is applicable to the named object. Several named objects (or even an entire directory) might share the same schema.

Issues such as structure and contents of the schema tree, permission to modify to the contents of the schema tree, and the effect of such modifications on the directory are dependent on the underlying directory.
Returns: the schema associated with the context; never null
Parameters:
- name - the name of the object whose schema is to be retrieved
Throws:
- OperationNotSupportedException - if schema not supported
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered

One category of information found in directory schemas is class definitions. An "object class" definition specifies the object's type and what attributes (mandatory and optional) the object must/can have. Note that the term "object class" being referred to here is in the directory sense rather than in the Java sense. For example, if the named object is a directory object of "Person" class, getSchemaClassDefinition() would return a DirContext representing the (directory's) object class definition of "Person".

The information that can be retrieved from an object class definition is directory-dependent.

Prior to JNDI 1.2, this method returned a single schema object representing the class definition of the named object. Since JNDI 1.2, this method returns a DirContext containing all of the named object's class definitions.
Returns: the DirContext containing the named object's class definitions; never null
Parameters:
- name - the name of the object whose object class definition is to be retrieved
Throws:
- OperationNotSupportedException - if schema not supported
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered

For an object to be selected, each attribute in matchingAttributes must match some attribute of the object. If matchingAttributes is empty or null, all objects in the target context are returned.

An attribute A₁ in matchingAttributes is considered to match an attribute A₂ of an object if A₁ and A₂ have the same identifier, and each value of A₁ is equal to some value of A₂. This implies that the order of values is not significant, and that A₂ may contain "extra" values not found in A₁ without affecting the comparison. It also implies that if A₁ has no values, then testing for a match is equivalent to testing for the presence of an attribute A₂ with the same identifier.

The precise definition of "equality" used in comparing attribute values is defined by the underlying directory service. It might use the Object.equals method, for example, or might use a schema to specify a different equality operation. For matching based on operations other than equality (such as substring comparison) use the version of the search method that takes a filter argument.

When changes are made to this DirContext, the effect on enumerations returned by prior calls to this method is undefined.

If the object does not have the attribute specified, the directory will ignore the nonexistent attribute and return the requested attributes that the object does have.

A directory might return more attributes than was requested (see Attribute Type Names in the class description), but is not allowed to return arbitrary, unrelated attributes.

See also Operational Attributes in the class description.
Returns: a non-null enumeration of SearchResult objects. Each SearchResult contains the attributes identified by attributesToReturn and the name of the corresponding object, named relative to the context named by name.
Parameters:
- name - the name of the context to search
- matchingAttributes - the attributes to search for. If empty or null, all objects in the target context are returned.
- attributesToReturn - the attributes to return. null indicates that all attributes are to be returned; an empty array indicates that none are to be returned.
Throws:
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered
See Also: SearchControls, SearchResult, DirContext.search(Name, String, Object[], SearchControls),

The interpretation of filterExpr is based on RFC 2254. It may additionally contain variables of the form {i} -- where i is an integer -- that refer to objects in the filterArgs array. The interpretation of filterExpr is otherwise identical to that of the filter parameter of the method search(Name, String, SearchControls).

When a variable {i} appears in a search filter, it indicates that the filter argument filterArgs[i] is to be used in that place. Such variables may be used wherever an attr, value, or matchingrule production appears in the filter grammar of RFC 2254, section 4. When a string-valued filter argument is substituted for a variable, the filter is interpreted as if the string were given in place of the variable, with any characters having special significance within filters (such as '*') having been escaped according to the rules of RFC 2254.

For directories that do not use a string representation for some or all of their attributes, the filter argument corresponding to an attribute value may be of a type other than String. Directories that support unstructured binary-valued attributes, for example, should accept byte arrays as filter arguments. The interpretation (if any) of filter arguments of any other type is determined by the service provider for that directory, which maps the filter operations onto operations with corresponding semantics in the underlying directory.

This method returns an enumeration of the results. Each element in the enumeration contains the name of the object and other information about the object (see SearchResult). The name is either relative to the target context of the search (which is named by the name parameter), or it is a URL string. If the target context is included in the enumeration (as is possible when cons specifies a search scope of SearchControls.OBJECT_SCOPE or SearchControls.SUBSTREE_SCOPE), its name is the empty string.

The SearchResult may also contain attributes of the matching object if the cons argument specifies that attributes be returned.

If the object does not have a requested attribute, that nonexistent attribute will be ignored. Those requested attributes that the object does have will be returned.

A directory might return more attributes than were requested (see Attribute Type Names in the class description) but is not allowed to return arbitrary, unrelated attributes.

If a search filter with invalid variable substitutions is provided to this method, the result is undefined. When changes are made to this DirContext, the effect on enumerations returned by prior calls to this method is undefined.

See also Operational Attributes in the class description.
Returns: an enumeration of SearchResults of the objects that satisfy the filter; never null
Parameters:
- name - the name of the context or object to search
- filterExpr - the filter expression to use for the search. The expression may contain variables of the form "{i}" where i is a nonnegative integer. May not be null.
- filterArgs - the array of arguments to substitute for the variables in filterExpr. The value of filterArgs[i] will replace each occurrence of "{i}". If null, equivalent to an empty array.
- cons - the search controls that control the search. If null, the default search controls are used (equivalent to (new SearchControls())).
Throws:
- ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException - if filterExpr contains {i} expressions where i is outside the bounds of the array filterArgs
- InvalidSearchControlsException - if cons contains invalid settings
- InvalidSearchFilterException - if filterExpr with filterArgs represents an invalid search filter
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered
See Also: DirContext.search(Name, Attributes, String[]), MessageFormat,

The format and interpretation of filter follows RFC 2254 with the following interpretations for attr and value mentioned in the RFC.

attr is the attribute's identifier.

value is the string representation the attribute's value. The translation of this string representation into the attribute's value is directory-specific.

For the assertion "someCount=127", for example, attr is "someCount" and value is "127". The provider determines, based on the attribute ID ("someCount") (and possibly its schema), that the attribute's value is an integer. It then parses the string "127" appropriately.

Any non-ASCII characters in the filter string should be represented by the appropriate Java (Unicode) characters, and not encoded as UTF-8 octets. Alternately, the "backslash-hexcode" notation described in RFC 2254 may be used.

If the directory does not support a string representation of some or all of its attributes, the form of search that accepts filter arguments in the form of Objects can be used instead. The service provider for such a directory would then translate the filter arguments to its service-specific representation for filter evaluation. See search(Name, String, Object[], SearchControls).

RFC 2254 defines certain operators for the filter, including substring matches, equality, approximate match, greater than, less than. These operators are mapped to operators with corresponding semantics in the underlying directory. For example, for the equals operator, suppose the directory has a matching rule defining "equality" of the attributes in the filter. This rule would be used for checking equality of the attributes specified in the filter with the attributes of objects in the directory. Similarly, if the directory has a matching rule for ordering, this rule would be used for making "greater than" and "less than" comparisons.

Not all of the operators defined in RFC 2254 are applicable to all attributes. When an operator is not applicable, the exception InvalidSearchFilterException is thrown.

The result is returned in an enumeration of SearchResults. Each SearchResult contains the name of the object and other information about the object (see SearchResult). The name is either relative to the target context of the search (which is named by the name parameter), or it is a URL string. If the target context is included in the enumeration (as is possible when cons specifies a search scope of SearchControls.OBJECT_SCOPE or SearchControls.SUBSTREE_SCOPE), its name is the empty string. The SearchResult may also contain attributes of the matching object if the cons argument specified that attributes be returned.

If the object does not have a requested attribute, that nonexistent attribute will be ignored. Those requested attributes that the object does have will be returned.

A directory might return more attributes than were requested (see Attribute Type Names in the class description) but is not allowed to return arbitrary, unrelated attributes.

See also Operational Attributes in the class description.
Returns: an enumeration of SearchResults of the objects that satisfy the filter; never null
Parameters:
- name - the name of the context or object to search
- filter - the filter expression to use for the search; may not be null
- cons - the search controls that control the search. If null, the default search controls are used (equivalent to (new SearchControls())).
Throws:
- InvalidSearchFilterException - if the search filter specified is not supported or understood by the underlying directory
- InvalidSearchControlsException - if the search controls contain invalid settings
- NamingException - if a naming exception is encountered
See Also: DirContext.search(Name, String, Object[], SearchControls), SearchControls, SearchResult,