Best practice to count group members

[klepptor]

Hi there!

I need to count the members of several Active Directory groups. This is my code:

            $group = Group::findByOrFail('distinguishedName', $groupDN);
            $members = $group->members()->get();
            $count_members = sizeof($members);

This works, but it's quite slow with >10 groups and >1500 members in each group.

Is there a better (faster) way to achieve my goal?

Thx!

[stevebauman]

Hi @klepptor!

I've just added a method for this in the latest v2.18.0 release.

This method (count()) will execute a query on your LDAP server for all members the group, but restrict the query to only return objectclass, trimming down the result size and speeding up the result.

Here is how you can utilize this method:

$group = Group::findByOrFail('distinguishedName', $groupDN);

$countOfMembers = $group->members()->count();

However, the fastest way would be to count the member attribute on your resulting $group model, if your server returns the full list (which may not be the case with larger groups):

// Notice the last argument in the below method, asking the LDAP
// server to only return the "member" attribute, speeding
// up the query due to smaller response size:
$group = Group::findByOrFail('distinguishedName', $groupDN, 'member');

$countOfMembers = count($group['member']);

[klepptor]

Great! @stevebauman

Thx a lot (and again) for your work!!

[stevebauman]

Happy to help @klepptor! 😄