Introduction
This program performs an LDAP ANR search of Active Directory for whatever string is in the name field when search button is clicked. Then it displays the results in a gridview control.
Wow! This VB.NET web application turned out great! As an added benefit; it's an awesome example of how you can pull off really cool apps without knowing a lick about what you're doing. OK I'm a pretty good VB.NET backyard programmer, but nobody's going to hire me to write code. Anyhow I get this idea, "Let's try and take the example I used on my website rkirchhof.com last week (Example 1) and attempt to port it to the web". Well, I spent a couple of nights searching the net for anything that could show me how. I found lots of stuff, much of it in C#, but I couldn't figure it out. I asked a buddy who gives me lots of VB.NET tips and he confessed that he too found it to be very challenging. Then on my 3rd night of fruitless searching, I stumbled on this ASP.NET GridView control demo. It turned out to be pure GOLD! Within an hour or two, I had a proof-of-concept and a day later the program I present here.
Background
Basically the demo showed me how to feed data to a gridview control from memory or from a database. I started with a new project and selected ASP.NET Web Application (which proved to be pretty awesome on its own before I added a stitch of code), then I cut out or commented out the parts I didn't need from the demo, pasted in the stuff I chose to keep, added a few columns, hid a column and a few controls, added a textbox, a button and a checkbox, pasted in the search routine from Ex.1 and BANG! New program.
Read more history here.
Using the Code
Running it in debug mode and getting it to run on a web server were two entirely different things, I followed the instructions I found here ASP.NET Web Application Project Deployment Overview and eventually got it working. You can check out a working demo here. I'd rather have had an active directory it could search for you, but this is enough to show you the basic idea.
Note: For purposes of the Web-Demo, I converted it back into a Database app. The AD version, provided in the download, works the same way except for the edit/Delete and Add features.
Anyhow enjoy the code, I believe it will work in any environment where there's a Windows Domain Controller although you'll need to publish it to a webserver with .NET 4.0. Use the Microsoft link I provided above for more guidance. You may also wish to customize the column labels or the fields pulled from AD to suit your own organization. Here's a list of Active Directory User Attributes you can use as a guide. ENJOY!
Open with Visual Studio and press F5. Enter a name in the field provided click search. The functions of the check boxes are self explanatory. You may customize as much as you'd like, then publish it to a webserver.
History
Be sure to check rkirchhof.com for updates.
- 11-2-2011: Initial version
- 11-18-2011: Cleaned up redundant and unused code, added a little more commenting, removed "First Name" & "last name" columns and replaced them with a single "User Name" column, also added the ability to automatically display the selected users thumbnail photo; when it's present in active directory
