---
title: Highrise to LDAP Gateway
teaser: A proof of concept to connect the Highrise CRM to an LDAP backend.
tags: web,ruby
author: Tammer Saleh
published_on: 2007-05-22
---
**WARNING:** Developed as a proof of concept in about 5 hours. Use with
caution.
Adapted from the [ldap-activerecord-server] for its [RailsConf 2007
presentation][angels], this application will proxy your Highrise contacts as
LDAP entries. Once
you have this installed and running on a local server, you can point OS X's
Addressbook (or Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) at it and get autocomplety goodness
in your local mail client.
## Quick instructions
1. Download either via
[tarball](http://thoughtbot.com/assets/highrise-ldap-proxy.tgz), or
[svn](http://svn.thoughtbot.com/highrise-ldap-proxy) (recommended)
2. Figure out your highrise API url:
* Click on 'My Info' in Highrise
* Click on 'Reveal authentication token for feeds/API' under 'User account'.
That will give you a key like `99531bd29aabd9bc9a09d04a60a97`
* Combine that with your highrise url like such:
`http://99531bd29aabd9bc9a09d04a60a97:X@tammersaleh.highrisehq.com/` (Yes,
X. Those 37signals dudes are wacky)
3. Edit the `conf/ldap-config.yml` file, primarily to set the right Highrise
API url
4. Run bin/ldap-server.rb start and check the log file for problems.
Now point your ldap server at localhost:1390 (or whatever host/port combination
you're configured for) and view your Highrise contacts in your addressbook.
Here's a screenshot of my OS X Addressbook configuration:
[](http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/2007-5-22-addressbook-screenshot.jpg)
...And one of Addressbook doin' it's thang:
[](http://images.thoughtbot.com/ui/2007-5-22-addressbook-screenshot2.jpg)
Comments and patches are more than welcome, but please keep in mind that this
was really just produced as a proof of concept.
[ldap-activerecord-server]: http://thoughtbot.com/projects/ldap-ar-gateway
[angels]: http://thoughtbot.com/assets/angels_and_daemons.pdf