Get all users in Active Directory group

Question

I'm trying to get all users that belong to a group in the Active Directory. I want to display the result as a drop down for the site users to select. This is what I have so far:

public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, string>> GetAllMembers(string group)
{
    var domainContext = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);
    var group = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(domainContext, group);

    return from principal in @group.Members select new KeyValuePair<string, string>(/* need to fill in key and value */);
}

The problem I have is that I am developing this outside of an active directory so cannot really test it yet (long story don't ask). I want to maximise my chances of success when deploying this into a testing environment.

My question is: if I want the key value pair to contain login username (key, ex: "DOMAIN\darkoz") and the users real name (value, ex: "Darko Z"), how do I get those? the Principal object has at least 5 properties with the word Name in it so I'm not sure which is which.

Bonus question: is this a generally accepted way of achieving my goal? I realize it is a very simple problem but with my lack of knowledge of Active Directory, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a better way of doing this. Will this work running on an account that is not admin?

Even if it is not your real problem, maybe [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2810613/how-to-find-all-groups-in-activedirectory-where-the-current-user-has-writepropert) can give you some additional ideas. — Oliver, Aug 31 '11 at 06:55

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '11 at 04:28

The solution was as I suspected:

public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, string>> GetAllMembers(string group)
{
    var domainContext = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);
    var groupPrincipal = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(domainContext, IdentityType.SamAccountName, group);

    return from m
           in groupPrincipal.Members 
           select new KeyValuePair<string, string>(m.SamAccountName, m.Name);
}

where the SamAccountName gives the users logon name and the Name is the actual name

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

I would read previous similar questions to answer both of your questions, about best practices and about how to read accountname and full name: Get all users from AD domain

anyway, from MS forum:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string groupName = "Domain Users";
    string domainName = "";

    PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, domainName);
    GroupPrincipal grp = GroupPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, IdentityType.SamAccountName, groupName);

    if (grp != null)
    {
         foreach (Principal p in grp.GetMembers(false))
            {
                Console.WriteLine(p.SamAccountName + " - " + p.DisplayName);
            }


        grp.Dispose();
        ctx.Dispose();
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
    else
    {
        Console.WriteLine("\nWe did not find that group in that domain, perhaps the group resides in a different domain?");
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

source: Get list of Active Directory users in C#

Get all users in Active Directory group

2 Answers2