How can I get DOMAIN\USER from an AD DirectoryEntry?

Question

How can I get the Windows user and domain from an Active Directory DirectoryEntry (SchemaClassName="user") object?

The user name is in the sAMAccountName property but where can I look up the domain name?

(I can't assume a fixed domain name because the users are from various subdomains.)

Answer 1

edit whoops, you haven't got .NET tagged...

Eehm? Or am i being to easy..?

User.Identity.Name()  'Gives DOMAIN\myuser

Answer 2

If you are using the System.DirectoryServices libraries, you should have a SearchResultsCollection from a DirectorySearcher.

Within each SearchResult's Properties collection, there is a "distinguishedname" property. That will contain all the DC parts that make up the domain your directory entry belongs to.

Answer 3

You won't find what you're looking for in the DirectoryEntry, unfortunately.

You have the sAMAccountName which typically is something like myuser (without the domain). You have the distinguishedName which is something like LDAP://cn=joe myuser,cn=Users,dc=yourCompany,dc=com. You also have a userPrincipalName but that's usually a name in the format of [email protected].

But you won't find any attribute that has the domain\MyUser in it, unfortunately. You'll have to put that together from your information about the domain name, and the sAMAccountName of the DirectoryEntry.

For more information and some excellent Excel sheets on all the LDAP and WinNT properties in System.DirectoryServices, check out the Hilltop Lab website by ADSI MVP Richard Mueller.

Marc

Answer 4

I found a partitions container in CN=Partitions,CN=Configuration that contains all domains.

When you match the user to the partion you can read the real domain name from the nETBIOSName+"\"+sAMAccountName property.

Answer 5

This assumes that results is a SearchResultCollection obtained from a DirectorySearcher, but you should be able to get the objectsid from a DirectoryEntry directly.

SearchResult result = results[0];
ResultPropertyValueCollection propertyValues = result.Properties["objectsid"];
byte[] objectsid = (byte[])propertyValues[0];

SecurityIdentifier sid = new SecurityIdentifier(sid, 0)

NTAccount account = (NTAccount) sid.Translate(typeof (NTAccount));
account.ToString(); // This give the DOMAIN\User format for the account

Answer 6

To get the DirectoryEntry domain name you can use recursion on directoryEntry.Parent. And then if directoryEntry.SchemaClassName == "domainDNS" you can get the domain name like this:

directoryEntry.Properties["Name"].Value

Answer 7

directoryEntry.Parent worked perfectly for me :)