Question

I’d like to do a LDAP query against AD to pull a user’s location (city). This is what I’ve put together:

    public static string GetUserLocation(string userName)
    {            
        string userLoc = "";

        DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://FTLAD04.corp.myDomain.com");
        DirectorySearcher dSearch = new DirectorySearcher(entry);

        dSearch.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(l=" + userName + "))";
        dSearch.PropertiesToLoad.Add("city");

        SearchResult result = dSearch.FindOne();
        userLoc = result.ToString();

        entry.Close();

        return userLoc;
    }

My SearchResult keeps coming back null, can anyone help point me in the right direction? Thank you!

Answer 1

I think your error is that you’re searching for the location, but setting the user name as the value…

You should search for the user’s name – and grab the location for that user:

public static string GetUserLocation(string userName)
{            
    string userLoc = "";

    DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://FTLAD04.corp.myDomain.com");
    DirectorySearcher dSearch = new DirectorySearcher(entry);

    dSearch.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(samAccountName=" + userName + "))";
    dSearch.PropertiesToLoad.Add("l");

    SearchResult result = dSearch.FindOne();

    if(result != null)
    {
       if(result.Properties["l"] != null && result.Properties["l"].Count > 0)
       {
          string location =  result.Properties["l"][0].ToString();
       }
    }

    return userLoc;
}

In AD, the user’s City (that you enter in the Active Directory Users & Computers tool) is stored in the l attribute of the DirectoryEntry.

For a complete list of all attributes and how they map from the ADU&C tool to actual LDAP objects and attributes, see Robert Mueller’s web site