Question

I’ve been asked to create a service in WCF, where input is user EMAIL-ID. there are many domains available in my server. My WCF service is hosted in xxx domain.

I need to get all yyy groups (Domain groups) for the user whose email matches.

Questions:
1. Can we connect to the Active directory from C#
2. How to get the User groups from C#.
3. It is just for user validation, there is nothing to do with Active Directory. (simple search in AD groups)

Since I’m new to this, even I dont know wheather it is possoble from C#. Early reply on this is highly appreciable. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace is exactly what you need.

Here’s some code that should get you started.

using System;
using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

namespace TestADCSharp
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            PrincipalContext p = new PrincipalContext(
                ContextType.Domain,
                "your.domain"
            );

            UserPrincipal u = new UserPrincipal(p);
            u.EmailAddress = "[e-mail]";

            PrincipalSearcher ps = new PrincipalSearcher(u);
            PrincipalSearchResult<Principal> results = ps.FindAll();

            foreach (Principal r in results)  {
                PrincipalSearchResult<Principal> groups = r.GetGroups();

                Console.WriteLine("Groups:");
                foreach (Principal g in groups) {
                    Console.WriteLine("\t" + g.Name);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}