Robert Chien's Blog

Another new feature in iPhone 3.0 software update is a built-in LDAP client. Previously, a third-party app such as Directory or LDAPeople is required.

To configure LDAP:

1. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Tap "Add Account...", then "Other"
3. Under Contacts, "Add LDAP Account"
4. Enter account information:
   • Server: ldap.company.com
   • User Name: [e.g. cn=First Last (employee ID), ou=people, dc=company,dc=com]
   • Password: [your password]
   • Description: [e.g. book]
5. Tap "Next"

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with Sun's book.sun.com. It gives a "Cannot Connect Using SSL" error. A reader already reported that this could be due to lack of ca-cert three months ago so looks like this might be an open iPhone bug.

Come to think of it, this could be an underlying OS X bug. Using the Address Book app in OS X 10.5 configured for book.sun.com, if "Allow self-signed certificates" is checked, lookup works; if it is unchecked, lookup fails, even though book.sun.com has a legitimate chained cert with Versign as CA.

In the meantime, if you want to use LDAPS on iPhone 3.0, the workaround is to buy a third-party app.

[UPDATE Jun 23, 2009] Bug ID# 7000490 filed with Apple.

Of all the new features Apple announced today in the upcoming iPhone 3.0 update, the two that get me most excited are CalDAV and LDAP support. It's great to see CalDAV come to mobile devices finally; I hope more smartphone manufacturers and developers will follow suit.

Many people wondered why Apple doesn't allow API access to the Calendar app. I had a suspicion it was because they had bigger plans for Calendar, and if they had allowed API access to Calendar data it would have precluded Apple from making these plans happen. Then came ActiveSync support, and now CalDAV. Perhaps Apple will open Calendar API access now?

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of detail around CalDAV and LDAP yet, so we'll have to wait until summer to find out. I wonder how offline access to a CalDAV calendar will be handled? Will it be read-only, or will changes sync back to the server? Does LDAP integrate well with other iPhone apps like Mail and Contacts? Will it support LDAPS?

[UPDATE Jun 17, 2009] iPhone 3.0 was released today and I posted a few entries related to configuring CalDAV and LDAP:

• Configuring CalDAV on iPhone 3.0 for Google Calendar
• Configuring CalDAV on iPhone 3.0 for Sun Calendar Server
• Configuring LDAP on iPhone 3.0