1. A method comprising: receiving an input attribute and an input value for a distinguished name entry, the input attribute and the distinguished name entry corresponding to objects defined in a schema for a lightweight directory access protocol directory; and generating an attribute list by navigating through a directory tree starting at the distinguished name entry specified by the input value until a value for the attribute in a distinguished name entry satisfies a criterion, wherein the generating comprises: extracting a distinguished name value from the input attribute for each distinguished name entry in the directory tree; and adding the distinguished name value as an entry in the attribute list, wherein the attribute list defines values for a virtual recursive attribute that does not correspond to an object defined in the schema.