Active Directory object picker control

• ADPicker Control Library - 18 Kb
• ADPicker Demo App - 18.1 Kb

Introduction

A basic Windows control library for selecting objects in your Active Directory.

Background

I've been involved in several Active Directory projects and frequently have had the need for a "picker" utility to select objects in the AD hierarchy. I decided to roll my own and encapsulate it in a Windows control library.

Sample Usage

Add the control to the list of Windows Forms controls in Visual Studio .NET, then drag the control onto a Windows Form. The control will automatically obtain your Active Directory root path and begin building a hierachal tree of the objects it finds.

private void AddTreeNodes(TreeNode node)
{
    Cursor.Current = Cursors.WaitCursor;
    treeView1.BeginUpdate();
    adh = new ADHelper();
    adh.GetChildEntries((string)node.Tag);
    IDictionaryEnumerator enumerator = adh.Children.GetEnumerator();

    // append children
    while (enumerator.MoveNext())
    {
        TreeNode childNode = new TreeNode((string)enumerator.Key);
        childNode.Tag = enumerator.Value; // ADsPath
        node.Nodes.Add(childNode);


        // specific object types
        if (!alExceptions.Contains(node.Text))
            childNode.ImageIndex =
                SetImageIndex(enumerator.Key.ToString().Substring(0,2));
        else
            childNode.ImageIndex = 3; // computer image
    }
    treeView1.EndUpdate();
    Cursor.Current = Cursors.Default;
}

AddTreeNodes() takes only one parameter, the parent TreeNode object. It then proceeds to add every child object it finds. Similar to Microsoft's ADSI Edit tool, the control displays a plus sign to indicate if a node has one or more child nodes.

Returning the ADsPath

Each time a node is selected in the hierarchy, the ADsPath public property is updated to reflect the fully-qualified path to the object (i.e. LDAP://OU=DEV,OU=US,DC=CORPORATE,DC=MYDOMAIN,DC=COM).

public void GetChildEntries(string adspath)
{
    if (adspath.Length > 0)
        entry = new DirectoryEntry(adspath);
    else
        entry = new DirectoryEntry();

    foreach (DirectoryEntry childEntry in entry.Children)
    {
        _htChildren.Add(childEntry.Name, childEntry.Path);
    }
}

private void treeView1_AfterSelect(object sender, 
      System.Windows.Forms.TreeViewEventArgs e)
{
    _adspath = (string)e.Node.Tag;
}

Compatibility

The control has been tested on Windows 2000/XP/2003. It should work for Windows 9x/NT with the Microsoft Active Directory Client Extensions installed.

History

• Version 1.0 - 04.22.2004 - First release version.
• Version 1.1 - 04.28.2004 - Added image support for object types.

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