I spent quite a while scratching my head about how to read operational attributes such as create and modify timestamps.This function solved it....function get_entry_system_attrs( $ds, $dn, $deref=LDAP_DEREF_NEVER ){ $conn = $ds; $attrs = array( 'creatorsname', 'createtimestamp', 'modifiersname', 'structuralObjectClass', 'entryUUID', 'modifytimestamp', 'subschemaSubentry', 'hasSubordinates', '+' ); $search = @ldap_read( $conn, $dn, '(objectClass=*)', $attrs, 0, 0, 0, $deref ); if( ! $search ) return false; $entry = ldap_first_entry( $conn, $search ); if( ! $entry) return false; $attrs = ldap_get_attributes( $conn, $entry ); if( ! $attrs ) return false; if( ! isset( $attrs['count'] ) ) return false; $count = $attrs['count']; unset( $attrs['count'] ); $return_attrs = array(); for( $i=0; $i<$count; $i++ ) { $attr_name = $attrs[$i]; unset( $attrs[$attr_name]['count'] ); $return_attrs[$attr_name] = $attrs[$attr_name]; } return $return_attrs;}