Unable to retrieve Date and Integer attributes from Active Directory

I'm trying to retrieve attributes from an Active Directory server using the Spring LdapTemplate. My code is working fine for String attributes, but I can't get other data types working.

I'm using an AbstractContextMapper to retrieve the values. Using a DirContextOperations object I can retrieve String attributes OK, but when I try to retrieve a Data or Integer value (using the getObjectAttribute method) the value returned is always a String class. How can I get these values as Dates and Integers?

Here's my code:

Code:

---

public class LdapDaoImpl implements LdapDao {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(LdapUserDaoImpl.class);

    private LdapTemplate ldapTemplate;
     
    /**
    * Perform a search using the filter criteria provided.  The SearchEntityAttribute array is
    * used to determine the result attributes to return e.g. for each record found in LDAP
    * we return the array of attributes specified in resultAttributes
    */
    @Override
    public List find(final Filter filter, final SearchEntityAttribute[] resultAttributes) {
        return ldapTemplate.search("", filter.encode(), new EntityContextMapper(resultAttributes));
    }
   
    /**
    * Search by distinguished name (a distinguished name is a unique identifier in LDAP, so we
    * can perform a direct lookup instead of having to perform a search)
    */
    @Override
    public Object findByDn(final String dn, final SearchEntityAttribute[] resultAttributes) {
        return ldapTemplate.lookup(dn, new EntityContextMapper(resultAttributes));
    }

    @Override
    public void setLdapTemplate(final LdapTemplate ldapTemplate) {
        this.ldapTemplate = ldapTemplate;
    }

    /**
    * EntityContextMapper is used by the LdapTemplate to map the LDAP search results to objects
    */
    class EntityContextMapper extends AbstractContextMapper {
        SearchEntityAttribute[] resultAttributes;

        public EntityContextMapper(final SearchEntityAttribute[] resultAttributes) {
            this.resultAttributes = resultAttributes;
        }

        @Override
        protected Object doMapFromContext(final DirContextOperations ctx) {
            //return an object array - this will get converted into a DTO (SearchResultDTO) by the SearchController
            final Object[] result = new Object[resultAttributes.length];

            for (int i = 0; i < resultAttributes.length; i++) {
                final SearchEntityAttribute resultAttribute = resultAttributes[i];
                final IEntityAttributeType entityAttributeType = resultAttribute.getEntityAttributeType();

                //The pk should map to the LDAP Distinguished Name - regardless of what the datasource name of the attribute
                if (entityAttributeType.getPrimaryKeyAttribute()) {
                    //get the distinguished name
                    result[i] = ctx.getDn().toString();
                } else {
                    //use the datasource name of the entity attribute type to find the result
                    EntityAttributeDataTypeEnum dataType = entityAttributeType.getDataType();
                    String dataSourceName = entityAttributeType.getDataSourceName();
                    if (EntityAttributeDataTypeEnum.String.equals(dataType)) {                   
                        result[i] = ctx.getStringAttribute(dataSourceName);
                    } else { 
                        //there don't seem to be methods to get other data types like Dates, Integers or Boolean's
                        //so just using the getOjectAttribute method
                        Object objectAttribute = ctx.getObjectAttribute(dataSourceName);
                        System.out.println("<<<<< Ojbect attribute " + dataSourceName + " type: " + objectAttribute.getClass().getName());
                        result[i] = objectAttribute;
//This is always a String class - how can I get a Date or Integer ?????????
                    }
                }
            }

            return result;
        }
    }
}

---

I noticed another couple of forum entries with similar queries but no resolution:

http://forum.springsource.org/showth...Date+attribute

http://forum.springsource.org/showth...DAP+attributes

Is what I'm trying to do possible, or can Spring LDAP only retrieve String values?

I'm using Spring LDAP 1.3.1.RELEASE.

Thanks.