Active Directory support in PowerShell

I read that Powershell can access and navigate many different hierarchcial
data stores such as the Registry, environemnt variables, certificates. Does
PowerShell provide, "out of the box" support for accessing and navigating
Active Directory?

Thanks,

Bill

AD support in Powershell is through the ADSI and .NET [system.directoryservices] class. Currently there is no psdrive provider for Active Directory support.

Examples to get you started:

$de = [adsi]"LDAP://CN=Someone,OU=SpecificOU,DC=domain,DC=com"

You can do a

$de | gm

to see the properties and methods available for the entry.

In addition, you can do 'searches' using directoryservices.directorysearcher like so:

$ldapQuery = "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user))"
$de = new-object system.directoryservices.directoryentry -argumentlist "LDAP://OU=SpecificOU,DC=domainDC=com"
$ads = new-object system.directoryservices.directorysearcher -argumentlist $de,$ldapQuery
$g = $ads.findall()

This will return only objects with ObjectCategory = person and ObjectClass = user under the SpecificOU. If you want to further filter that to exclude disabled users, change $ldapQuery to:

$ldapQuery = "(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))"
$de = new-object system.directoryservices.directoryentry -argumentlist "LDAP://OU=SpecificOU,DC=domainDC=com"
$ads = new-object system.directoryservices.directorysearcher -argumentlist $de,$ldapQuery
$g = $ads.findall()

Now you have just a list of non-disabled users. The one thing to keep in mind is that this is simply a SearchResult. If you want access to the *actual* directory entry you can do the following:

$direntry = [adsi]$g[0].path


--

gaurhoth
http://gaurhothw.spaces.live.com/


"bill" <bill@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:5209055A-EDA4-4A20-BC89-44B58A165BCA@microsoft.com...
>I read that Powershell can access and navigate many different hierarchcial
> data stores such as the Registry, environemnt variables, certificates. Does
> PowerShell provide, "out of the box" support for accessing and navigating
> Active Directory?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill