LDAP Data Interchange Format

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The LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) is a standard plain text data interchange format for representing Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory content and update requests. LDIF conveys directory content as a set of records, one record for each object (or entry). It also represents update requests, such as Add, Modify, Delete, and Rename, as a set of records, one record for each update request.

LDIF was designed in the early 1990s by Tim Howes, Mark C. Smith, and Gordon Good while at the University of Michigan. LDIF was updated and extended in the late 1990s for use with Version 3 of LDAP. This later version of LDIF is called version 1 and is formally specified in RFC 2849, an IETF Standard Track RFC. RFC 2849 is authored by Gordon Good and was published in June 2000. It is currently a Proposed Standard.

A number of extensions to LDIF have been proposed over the years. One extension has been formally specified by the IETF and published. RFC 4525, authored by Kurt Zeilenga, extended LDIF to support the LDAP Modify-Increment extension. It is expected that additional extensions will be published by the IETF in the future.