1. A method comprising: receiving an input virtual recursive attribute and an input value for a distinguished name entry, wherein the distinguished name entry corresponds to an object defined in a schema for a lightweight directory access protocol directory and the input virtual recursive attribute does not correspond to an object defined in the schema; and generating an attribute list by navigating through a list of distinguished name values for the input virtual recursive attribute, wherein the generating comprises: adding a distinguished name value in the list as an entry in the attribute list if the distinguished name value in the list matches the input value, wherein the attribute list defines values for a virtual reverse attribute that is not defined in the schema.