What is LDIF?

The LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Files) are used to exchange data between the LDAP directory servers. This plain text data interchange format was designed by Tim Howes in the early 1990s for representing LDAP directory content and update requests. The content in this file is represented as a group of attributes. Here, the records are separated from one another by blank lines while the attributes of the record itself are represented as single logical lines.

There are many tools that deploy LDIF such as Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, JXplorer, Netscape Communicator, and OpenLDAP.