How to list all users in Active Directory in DropDownList Control

Question

I am using Visual Studio 2005 C #.

I am trying to get a list of users in my Active Directory and paste them into a DropDownList control.

Can I find out how I can pull users out and how to insert them into the DropDownList control?

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EDIT:

There are many functions that I would like to perform.

First, you need to list all users in DropDownList and have 2 "User and admin" checkboxes and the base for the role assigned to the user in DDL, the corresponding checkboxes will be checked.

Checking and unchecking the role will also assign / cancel roles accordingly.

Answer 1

If you are using .NET 3.5 or later, you can use PrincipalSearcher and "query by example" to perform a search:

 // create your domain context PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain); // define a "query-by-example" principal - here, we search for all users UserPrincipal qbeUser = new UserPrincipal(ctx); // 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..... } 

If you haven’t already done so, absolutely read the MSDN article "Security Principles in the .NET Framework 3.5" , which shows how to make better use of the new features in System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

This code can be quite slow - especially if you have a large AD and a large number of users in your AD. But then again: is it really useful to list thousands of users in one folder? You may need to rethink your strategy there ....

Update: if you cannot use .NET 3.5, you will have to use the DirectorySearcher "legacy" class instead - something like this:

 // find your default naming context DirectoryEntry deRoot = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://RootDSE"); string defaultCtx = deRoot.Properties["defaultNamingContext"].Value.ToString(); // define a directory searcher for your default context string searchRootLDAPPath = "LDAP://" + defaultCtx; DirectoryEntry defaultDE = new DirectoryEntry(searchRootLDAPPath); // define searcher - search through entire subtree, search for users // (objectCategory=Person) DirectorySearcher dsAllUsers = new DirectorySearcher(defaultDE); dsAllUsers.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree; dsAllUsers.Filter = "(objectCategory=Person)"; // get the results SearchResultCollection result = dsAllUsers.FindAll(); // count the user objects found int count = result.Count; 

As I mentioned, this will not work very well on a large AD, and you may encounter restrictions (for example, a maximum of 1,000 users) and other problems. Perhaps you should allow users to search for users, for example. by their name or something - instead of listing all your users (depending on the size of your AD).

Answer 2

Like marc_s, the answer also depends on .Net 3.5. But just because it uses LINQ, which can be translated back into some foreach loops, make the code also executable in .Net 2.0.

But because I'm a DRY fan, here is just a link to the old answer myself .

Answer 3

For current domain

 DirectorySearcher AllUsers = new DirectorySearcher(Domain.GetCurrentDomain().GetDirectoryEntry()); AllUsers.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree; AllUsers.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(objectCategory=person))"; int count = AllUsers.FindAll().Count;