How to get all the AD groups for a particular user?

Question

I checked this post already. But it doesn't answer my question. I want to get all the active directory groups in which a particular user is a member.

I've written the following code. But I'm not able to proceed further as I don't know how to give the filter and how to access the properties.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://mydomain.com");
        DirectorySearcher searcher = new DirectorySearcher(de);
        searcher.Filter = "(&(ObjectClass=group))";
        searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("distinguishedName");
        searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("sAMAccountName");
        searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name");
        searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("objectSid");
        SearchResultCollection results = searcher.FindAll();
        int i = 1;
        foreach (SearchResult res in results)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Result" + Convert.ToString(i++));
            DisplayProperties("distinguishedName", res);
            DisplayProperties("sAMAccouontName", res);
            DisplayProperties("name", res);
            DisplayProperties("objectSid", res);
            Console.WriteLine();
        }

        Console.ReadKey();
    }

    private static void DisplayProperties(string property, SearchResult res)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("\t" + property);
        ResultPropertyValueCollection col = res.Properties[property];
        foreach (object o in col)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("\t\t" + o.ToString());
        }
    }
}

Any ideas?

Deracinate

Okie. I learnt from here - eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/30375857/… that memberOf wont return Primary Groups of a user. But I can get the primaryGroupID which gives the RID(?) of the group using which I need to get the AD group. Any ideas how to do it? – Deracinate

Please check my newly posted answer. Your current approach doesn't work very well. If the user is assigned to an Universal Group in another forest, the Universal Group won't show up in the memberOf attribute – Herbivorous

Answer 1

Just query the "memberOf" property and iterate though the return, example:

            search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf");
            StringBuilder groupNames = new StringBuilder(); //stuff them in | delimited

                SearchResult result = search.FindOne();
                int propertyCount = result.Properties["memberOf"].Count;
                String dn;
                int equalsIndex, commaIndex;

                for (int propertyCounter = 0; propertyCounter < propertyCount;
                    propertyCounter++)
                {
                    dn = (String)result.Properties["memberOf"][propertyCounter];

                    equalsIndex = dn.IndexOf("=", 1);
                    commaIndex = dn.IndexOf(",", 1);
                    if (-1 == equalsIndex)
                    {
                        return null;
                    }
                    groupNames.Append(dn.Substring((equalsIndex + 1),
                                (commaIndex - equalsIndex) - 1));
                    groupNames.Append("|");
                }

            return groupNames.ToString();

This just stuffs the group names into the groupNames string, pipe delimited, but when you spin through you can do whatever you want with them

Prostitution

I know it has been a while, but do you know how you would separate the Security Groups from the Distribution Lists? – Blouse

never mind. Worked it out. Adding code for "Future Generations". Pulls the group type and adds it as a second string. StringBuilder groupTypes = new StringBuilder(); secondequalsIndex = dn.IndexOf("=", equalsIndex+1); secondcommaIndex = dn.IndexOf(",", commaIndex+1); groupTypes.Append(dn.Substring((secondequalsIndex + 1),(secondcommaIndex - secondequalsIndex) - 1)); groupTypes.Append("|"); – Blouse

Answer 2

You should use System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement. It's much easier. Here is a nice code project article giving you an overview on all the classes in this DLL.

As you pointed out, your current approach doesn't find out the primary group. Actually, it's much worse than you thought. There are some more cases that it doesn't work, like the domain local group from another domain. You can check here for details. Here is how the code looks like if you switch to use System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement. The following code can find the immediate groups this user assigned to, which includes the primary group.

UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(new PrincipalContext (ContextType.Domain, "mydomain.com"), IdentityType.SamAccountName, "username");
foreach (GroupPrincipal group in user.GetGroups())
{
    Console.Out.WriteLine(group);
}

Herbivorous

user.GetGroups() is very slow! – Harquebus

@Kevin.NET very slow? benchmarks ? high performance solution? – Hyson

Indeed, its an easy solution, but very slow. every item in the foreach takes up some time, so the query is not done in 1 single call, but every time you loop. – Holliholliday

@Holliholliday call tolist() on getgroups() if it's calling every time. groups = userPrincipal.GetAuthorizationGroups().ToList(); is decently fast – Coinage

System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement will work for querying one but unbelievably slow when querying 500. The reason for this is this class transfers everything over the wire even if you only need to select a few fields. – Branching

Answer 3

Use tokenGroups:

DirectorySearcher ds = new DirectorySearcher();
ds.Filter = String.Format("(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName={0}))", username);
SearchResult sr = ds.FindOne();

DirectoryEntry user = sr.GetDirectoryEntry();
user.RefreshCache(new string[] { "tokenGroups" });

for (int i = 0; i < user.Properties["tokenGroups"].Count; i++) {
    SecurityIdentifier sid = new SecurityIdentifier((byte[]) user.Properties["tokenGroups"][i], 0);
    NTAccount nt = (NTAccount)sid.Translate(typeof(NTAccount));
    //do something with the SID or name (nt.Value)
}

Note: this only gets security groups

Crossbred

This code was about 10 times faster than any of the other codes I have tried (using PrincipalContext). Went from about 4 seconds fetching all groups for a user to 400 ms. Thanks. – Cambell

@Cambell I don't understand this, am I supposed to add each NTAccount to a List, for each iteration? – Salford

Is there anyway of determining the depth of how nested each group is using this method please? – Lecture

Answer 4

This is how I list all the groups (direct and indirect) for a specific Distinguished Name:

The string 1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941 specifies LDAP_MATCHING_RULE_IN_CHAIN.

This rule is limited to filters that apply to the DN. This is a special "extended" match operator that walks the chain of ancestry in objects all the way to the root until it finds a match.

This method is 25 times faster than the UserPrincipal.GetGroups() method in my testing.

Note: The primary group (typically Domain Users) is not returned by this or GetGroups() method. To get the primary group name too, I've confirmed this method works.

Additionally, I found this list of LDAP filters extremely useful.

private IEnumerable<string> GetGroupsForDistinguishedName(DirectoryEntry domainDirectoryEntry, string distinguishedName)
{
    var groups = new List<string>();
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(distinguishedName))
    {
        var getGroupsFilterForDn = $"(&(objectCategory=group)(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:={distinguishedName}))";
        using (DirectorySearcher dirSearch = new DirectorySearcher(domainDirectoryEntry))
        {
            dirSearch.Filter = getGroupsFilterForDn;
            dirSearch.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name");

            using (var results = dirSearch.FindAll())
            {
                foreach (SearchResult result in results)
                {
                    if (result.Properties.Contains("name"))
                        groups.Add((string)result.Properties["name"][0]);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return groups;
}

Scientism

Using a filter of $"(&(objectCategory=group)(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:={distinguishedName}))" makes the query even more performant. It seems that AD uses the group filter to limit the number of objects it checks (according to Note 19 here: social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/…). Other than that, this works great :) – Fictionist

Answer 5

This code works even faster (two 1.5 faster than my previous version):

    public List<String> GetUserGroups(WindowsIdentity identity)
    {
        List<String> groups = new List<String>();

        String userName = identity.Name;
        int pos = userName.IndexOf(@"\");
        if (pos > 0) userName = userName.Substring(pos + 1);

        PrincipalContext domain = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, "riomc.com");
        UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(domain, IdentityType.SamAccountName, userName); // NGeodakov

        DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://RIOMC.com");
        DirectorySearcher search = new DirectorySearcher(de);
        search.Filter = "(&(objectClass=group)(member=" + user.DistinguishedName + "))";
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("samaccountname");
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf");

        SearchResultCollection results = search.FindAll();
        foreach (SearchResult sr in results)
        {
            GetUserGroupsRecursive(groups, sr, de);
        }

        return groups;
    }

    public void GetUserGroupsRecursive(List<String> groups, SearchResult sr, DirectoryEntry de)
    {
        if (sr == null) return;

        String group = (String)sr.Properties["cn"][0];
        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(group))
        {
            group = (String)sr.Properties["samaccountname"][0];
        }
        if (!groups.Contains(group))
        {
            groups.Add(group);
        }

        DirectorySearcher search;
        SearchResult sr1;
        String name;
        int equalsIndex, commaIndex;
        foreach (String dn in sr.Properties["memberof"])
        {
            equalsIndex = dn.IndexOf("=", 1);
            if (equalsIndex > 0)
            {
                commaIndex = dn.IndexOf(",", equalsIndex + 1);
                name = dn.Substring(equalsIndex + 1, commaIndex - equalsIndex - 1);

                search = new DirectorySearcher(de);
                search.Filter = "(&(objectClass=group)(|(cn=" + name + ")(samaccountname=" + name + ")))";
                search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");
                search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("samaccountname");
                search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf");
                sr1 = search.FindOne();
                GetUserGroupsRecursive(groups, sr1, de);
            }
        }
    }

Milone

Answer 6

The following example is from the Code Project article, (Almost) Everything In Active Directory via C#:

// userDn is a Distinguished Name such as:
// "LDAP://CN=Joe Smith,OU=Sales,OU=domain,OU=com"
public ArrayList Groups(string userDn, bool recursive)
{
    ArrayList groupMemberships = new ArrayList();
    return AttributeValuesMultiString("memberOf", userDn,
        groupMemberships, recursive);
}

public ArrayList AttributeValuesMultiString(string attributeName,
     string objectDn, ArrayList valuesCollection, bool recursive)
{
    DirectoryEntry ent = new DirectoryEntry(objectDn);
    PropertyValueCollection ValueCollection = ent.Properties[attributeName];
    IEnumerator en = ValueCollection.GetEnumerator();

    while (en.MoveNext())
    {
        if (en.Current != null)
        {
            if (!valuesCollection.Contains(en.Current.ToString()))
            {
                valuesCollection.Add(en.Current.ToString());
                if (recursive)
                {
                    AttributeValuesMultiString(attributeName, "LDAP://" +
                    en.Current.ToString(), valuesCollection, true);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    ent.Close();
    ent.Dispose();
    return valuesCollection;
}

Just call the Groups method with the Distinguished Name for the user, and pass in the bool flag to indicate if you want to include nested / child groups memberships in your resulting ArrayList:

ArrayList groups = Groups("LDAP://CN=Joe Smith,OU=Sales,OU=domain,OU=com", true);
foreach (string groupName in groups)
{
    Console.WriteLine(groupName);
}

If you need to do any serious level of Active Directory programming in .NET I highly recommend bookmarking & reviewing the Code Project article I mentioned above.

Venice

Okie. I've recursive found the parent groups. But still two groups (or folders?) 'Domain Users' is not coming in the list. But if I check the 'memberOf' tab it is there. Domain users is a builtin group right? Am I missing something here? – Deracinate

Answer 7

Here is the code that worked for me:

public ArrayList GetBBGroups(WindowsIdentity identity)
{
    ArrayList groups = new ArrayList();

    try
    {
        String userName = identity.Name;
        int pos = userName.IndexOf(@"\");
        if (pos > 0) userName = userName.Substring(pos + 1);

        PrincipalContext domain = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, "riomc.com");
        UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(domain, IdentityType.SamAccountName, userName);

        DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://RIOMC.com");
        DirectorySearcher search = new DirectorySearcher(de);
        search.Filter = "(&(objectClass=group)(member=" + user.DistinguishedName + "))";
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("samaccountname");
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn");

        String name;
        SearchResultCollection results = search.FindAll();
        foreach (SearchResult result in results)
        {
            name = (String)result.Properties["samaccountname"][0];
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(name))
            {
                name = (String)result.Properties["cn"][0];
            }
            GetGroupsRecursive(groups, de, name);
        }
    }
    catch
    {
        // return an empty list...
    }

    return groups;
}

public void GetGroupsRecursive(ArrayList groups, DirectoryEntry de, String dn)
{
    DirectorySearcher search = new DirectorySearcher(de);
    search.Filter = "(&(objectClass=group)(|(samaccountname=" + dn + ")(cn=" + dn + ")))";
    search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberof");

    String group, name;
    SearchResult result = search.FindOne();
    if (result == null) return;

    group = @"RIOMC\" + dn;
    if (!groups.Contains(group))
    {
        groups.Add(group);
    }
    if (result.Properties["memberof"].Count == 0) return;
    int equalsIndex, commaIndex;
    foreach (String dn1 in result.Properties["memberof"])
    {
        equalsIndex = dn1.IndexOf("=", 1);
        if (equalsIndex > 0)
        {
            commaIndex = dn1.IndexOf(",", equalsIndex + 1);
            name = dn1.Substring(equalsIndex + 1, commaIndex - equalsIndex - 1);
            GetGroupsRecursive(groups, de, name);
        }
    }
}

I measured it's performance in a loop of 200 runs against the code that uses the AttributeValuesMultiString recursive method; and it worked 1.3 times faster. It might be so because of our AD settings. Both snippets gave the same result though.

Milone

Answer 8

I would like to say that Microsoft LDAP has some special ways to search recursively for all of memberships of a user.

1. The Matching Rule you can specify for the "member" attribute. In particular, using the Microsoft Exclusive LDAP_MATCHING_RULE_IN_CHAIN rule for "member" attribute allows recursive/nested membership searching. The rule is used when you add it after the member attribute. Ex. (member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:= XXXXX )

2. For the same Domain as the Account, The filter can use <SID=S-1-5-21-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX> instead of an Accounts DistinguishedName attribute which is very handy to use cross domain if needed. HOWEVER it appears you need to use the ForeignSecurityPrincipal <GUID=YYYY> as it will not resolve your SID as it appears the <SID=> tag does not consider ForeignSecurityPrincipal object type. You can use the ForeignSecurityPrincipal DistinguishedName as well.

Using this knowledge, you can LDAP query those hard to get memberships, such as the "Domain Local" groups an Account is a member of but unless you looked at the members of the group, you wouldn't know if user was a member.

//Get Direct+Indirect Memberships of User (where SID is XXXXXX)

string str = "(& (objectCategory=group)(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:=<SID=XXXXXX>) )";

//Get Direct+Indirect **Domain Local** Memberships of User (where SID is XXXXXX)

string str2 = "(& (objectCategory=group)(|(groupType=-2147483644)(groupType=4))(member:1.2.840.113556.1.4.1941:=<SID=XXXXXX>) )";

//TAA DAA

Feel free to try these LDAP queries after substituting the SID of a user you want to retrieve all group memberships of. I figure this is similiar if not the same query as what the PowerShell Command Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership uses behind the scenes. The command states "If you want to search for local groups in another domain, use the ResourceContextServer parameter to specify the alternate server in the other domain."

If you are familiar enough with C# and Active Directory, you should know how to perform an LDAP search using the LDAP queries provided.

Additional Documentation:

• <SID> Binding String
• <GUID> Binding String

Behalf

how to perform an LDAP search using the LDAP queries provided ? – Hyson

Answer 9

If you have a LDAP connection with a username and password to connect to Active Directory, here is the code I used to connect properly:

using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

// ...

// Connection information
var connectionString = "LDAP://domain.com/DC=domain,DC=com";
var connectionUsername = "your_ad_username";
var connectionPassword = "your_ad_password";

// Get groups for this user
var username = "myusername";

// Split the LDAP Uri
var uri = new Uri(connectionString);
var host = uri.Host;
var container = uri.Segments.Count() >=1 ? uri.Segments[1] : "";

// Create context to connect to AD
var princContext = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, host, container, connectionUsername, connectionPassword);

// Get User
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(princContext, IdentityType.SamAccountName, username);

// Browse user's groups
foreach (GroupPrincipal group in user.GetGroups())
{
    Console.Out.WriteLine(group.Name);
}

Trying

Answer 10

there is a helpers class based in curtisk response:

    public static class ActiveDirectoryHelpers
    {
        private static readonly Regex keyValuePair = new Regex($"(?<key>[^=]+)=(?<value>[^,]+),?");

        public enum X500DirectorySpecification
        {
            /// <summary>Common Name</summary>
            CN,
            /// <summary>Organizational Unit</summary>
            OU,
            /// <summary>Domain Component</summary>
            DC
        }

        public static IEnumerable<string> GetUserMemberOfNodeValue(this PrincipalContext principalContext, string userName, X500DirectorySpecification node)
        {
            return principalContext.GetUserMemberOf(userName)
                .SelectMany(memberOf =>
                    GetUserMemberOfKeyValues(memberOf).Where(item => item.Key == node.ToString()).Select(item => item.Value));
        }

        private static IEnumerable<string> GetUserMemberOf(this PrincipalContext principalContext, string userName)
        {
            using var user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(principalContext, userName);
            IEnumerable<string> result = null;
            if (user != null)
            {
                var directoryEntry = (DirectoryEntry)user.GetUnderlyingObject();
                var directorySearcher = new DirectorySearcher(directoryEntry);

                directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf");
                result = directorySearcher.FindOne().Properties["memberOf"].Cast<string>();
            }

            return result ?? Enumerable.Empty<string>();
        }

        private static IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, string>> GetUserMemberOfKeyValues(string memberOfValue)
        {
            return keyValuePair.Matches(memberOfValue).OfType<Match>()
                .Select(item => new KeyValuePair<string, string>(item.Groups["key"].Value.Trim(), item.Groups["value"].Value));
        }
    }

Elegize

Answer 11

PrincipalContext pc1 = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, "DomainName", UserAccountOU, UserName, Password);
UserPrincipal UserPrincipalID = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(pc1, IdentityType.SamAccountName, UserID);

searcher.Filter = "(&(ObjectClass=group)(member = " + UserPrincipalID.DistinguishedName + "));

Ulster

Please don't post just code only answers. Please detail what is going on in your answer. – Deodorize