Recipe16.13.Viewing the Members of a Group


Recipe 16.13. Viewing the Members of a Group

Problem

You want to view the members of a group.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

  1. Open the ADUC snap-in.

  2. If you need to change domains, right-click on Active Directory Users and Computers in the left pane, select Connect to Domain, enter the domain name, and click OK.

  3. In the left pane, right-click on the domain and select Find.

  4. Enter the name of the group and click Find Now.

  5. Double-click on the group in the bottom results pane.

  6. Click the Members tab.

Using a command-line interface

The following command displays the direct members of a group:

> dsget group "<GroupDN>" -members

Add the -expand option to enumerate all nested group members:

> dsget group "<GroupDN>" -members -expand

Using VBScript
' This code prints the direct members of the specified group. ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ strGroupDN = "<GroupDN>" ' e.g., cn=SalesGroup,ou=Groups,dc=rallencorp,dc=com ' ------ END CONFIGURATION ---------     set objGroup = GetObject("LDAP://" & strGroupDN) Wscript.Echo "Members of " & objGroup.Name & ":" for each objMember in objGroup.Members    Wscript.Echo objMember.Name next ' This code prints the nested membership of a group. ' ------ SCRIPT CONFIGURATION ------ strGroupDN = "<GroupDN>"  ' e.g., cn=SalesGroup,ou=Grps,dc=rallencorp,dc=com ' ------ END CONFIGURATION --------- strSpaces  = " " set dicSeenGroupMember = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary") Wscript.Echo "Members of " & strGroupDN & ":" DisplayMembers "LDAP://" & strGroupDN, strSpaces, dicSeenGroupMember     Function DisplayMembers ( strGroupADsPath, strSpaces, dicSeenGroupMember)        set objGroup = GetObject(strGroupADsPath)    for each objMember In objGroup.Members       Wscript.Echo strSpaces & objMember.Name       if objMember.Class = "group" then          if dicSeenGroupMember.Exists(objMember.ADsPath) then             Wscript.Echo strSpaces & "   ^ already seen group member " & _                                      "(stopping to avoid loop)"          else             dicSeenGroupMember.Add objMember.ADsPath, 1             DisplayMembers objMember.ADsPath, strSpaces & " ", _                            dicSeenGroupMember          end if       end if    next     End Function

Discussion

The member attribute of a group object contains the distinguished names of the directly added group members. This is in contrast to indirect group members, which are group members due to nested group membership. To view the complete group membership, recurse through each group's members.

In the second VBScript example, I used a dictionary object to prevent an infinite loop. The dictionary object stores each group member; before the DisplayMembers function is called, a check is performed to determine if the group has already been evaluated. If so, a message is displayed indicating the group will not be processed again. If this type of checking was not employed and you had a situation where group A was a member of group B, group B was a member of group C, and group C was a member of group A, the loop would repeat without terminating.

See Also

MSDN: IADsMember



Windows Server Cookbook
Windows Server Cookbook for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000
ISBN: 0596006330
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 380
Authors: Robbie Allen

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