Question

I’m writing a small application which updates my AD with info from a DB table, but are having trouble finding examples of best practices.

As far as I understand, I’ll need to:

• create a DirectorySearcher with a filter objectClass=user and search for the given cn
• if found, I need to use result.getDirectoryEntry to get a handle to the actual object,
• Update all the values to my entryobject with the one’s from the db and then commit changes

Is that it or am I totally lost, any hints or examples are welcome

Answer 1

If you’re on .NET 3.5 and up, you should check out the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement (S.DS.AM) namespace. Read all about it here:

• Managing Directory Security Principals in the .NET Framework 3.5
• MSDN docs on System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Basically, you can define a domain context and easily find users and/or groups in AD:

// set up domain context
PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

// find a user
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, "SomeUserName");

if(user != null)
{
   // update the properties you need to 
   user.DisplayName = "Joe Blow";
   user.Description = "Some description";

   // save back your changes
   user.Save();
}

The new S.DS.AM makes it really easy to play around with users and groups in AD!

If you need to search a whole bunch of users, you can use a PrincipalSearcher and a “query-by-example” principal to do your searching:

// create your domain context
PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

// define a "query-by-example" principal - here, we search for a UserPrincipal 
// and with the first name (GivenName) of "Bruce"
UserPrincipal qbeUser = new UserPrincipal(ctx);
qbeUser.GivenName = "Bruce";

// create your principal searcher passing in the QBE principal    
PrincipalSearcher srch = new PrincipalSearcher(qbeUser);

// find all matches
foreach(var found in srch.FindAll())
{
    // do whatever here - "found" is of type "Principal" - it could be user, group, computer.....          
    UserPrincipal user = found as UserPrincipal;

    if(user != null)
    {
       // update the properties you need to 
       user.DisplayName = "Joe Blow";
       user.Description = "Some description";

       // save back your changes
       user.Save();
    }
}

You can specify any of the properties on the UserPrincipal and use those as “query-by-example” for your PrincipalSearcher.