How to retrieve SAMAccountName from Active Directory

active-directory, c#, directoryservices

Solution

First off: `Domain\Administrator` is NOT a SAM account name! The SAM account name is a unique (over the whole domain) name of up to 20 characters in length - typically it's your "Windows user name" (e.g. `Administrator`) - but it does NOT include the domain name. That value made up of `domain\username` is NOT stored in Active Directory anywhere!

If you're on .NET 3.5 and up, you should check out the `System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement` (S.DS.AM) namespace. Read all about it here:

- Managing Directory Security Principals in the .NET Framework 3.5

- MSDN docs on System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Basically, you can define a domain context and easily find users and/or groups in AD:

// set up domain context
PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

// find a user
UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, "SomeUserName");

if(user != null)
{
   // do something here....     
   string samAccountName = user.SamAccountName;
}

The new S.DS.AM makes it really easy to play around with users and groups in AD!

If you want to search for a whole group of users (or groups or computers), you can use a `PrincipalSearcher` and a "query-by-example" principal to do your searching:

// create your domain context
PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

// define a "query-by-example" principal - here, we search for a UserPrincipal 
// and with the last name (Surname) of "Miller"
UserPrincipal qbeUser = new UserPrincipal(ctx);
qbeUser.Surname = "Miller";

// 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.....          
}

Problem

Original source