Question

I’m using DirectorySearcher to get the groups of an AD user in which he is a member of using the ‘memberof’ property. But according to this msdn page the ‘memberof’ property only returns the direct groups in which the user is a member. How can I get the indirect groups of the user too.

For ex.

Group A -> User X, User Y, Group B
Group B -> User Z
Group C -> User Z

I want to get the result as Group A, Group B, Group C for the user Z since he is an indirect user of Group A.

Update

Okie. I’ve followed this codeproject article to get the groups recursively. But still the builtin group ‘Domain Users’ is missing from the list. So does that mean Built in groups wont appear in the directory searcher?

Answer 1

You have to define your own method of iterating through the direct groups until you reach the common root for all. You will need to perform an LDAP query against each group and use the same memberOf attribute to determine which groups that group belongs to. This can be time intensive, particularly if the groups are numerous and laid out web-like.