Get a User's Full Name

Introduction

The System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace in .NET 3.5 gives you access to the UserPrincipal class which "Encapsulates principles that are user accounts." There is a .Current property which "Gets a user principal object that represents the current user under which the thread is running." Once you have this UserPrincipal object for the current user, you can get at all kinds of cool properties and methods.

Background 

I wanted to display the current user's full name to see who is using my application and then log that to a table in SQL, how hard could it be!? I was using VB.NET for this particular project so I tried My.User.Name... whew that was pretty easy. Once run, it returned "MyDomain\UsersInitials" since the username standard we have here are the initials. Getting the initials was not very helpful in figuring out who was using my program (I'm too lazy to manually cross reference usernames, with full names in ADUC).

So I had to search around for quite a while and I couldn't find any articles or postings that quickly point to this class for user information. There were other people that had this question and they were turned to everything from using "WinNT://" queries, to using the Win32_UserAccount and the WMI Code Creator, to older articles saying you just can't do it!

Eventually I stumbled upon this article on MSDN.

I figured I'd post an article to maybe make it easier for people to find information on getting at current user properties. 

Using the Code 

Using the code couldn't be easier. Just add a reference and using or imports statement to System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement and enjoy. 

Imports System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Dim userFullName As String = UserPrincipal.Current.DisplayName

One caveat, as pointed out in a comment below, is that this should be wrapped with a Try...Catch block. If the current user is on a domain and can't reach the domain controller (network failure), he will receive a PrincipalServerDown exception. However if he is not on a domain, he will not receive this error on a network failure.

Also, if you change the username and don't log off, you will receive a NoMatchingPrincipleException since the .Current UserPrincipal name can't be found. This would probably never happen but you might as well Catch it.

If an exception occurs, I'd suggest just using the username from System.Environment.UserName or My.User.Name in VB.

Once you get at the .Current property, which returns a UserPrincipal class, you can access all kinds of properties on the current user. A table of properties is listed below (from here): 

	Name	Description
	AccountExpirationDate	Gets or sets a Nullable DateTime that specifies the date and time that the account expires. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	AccountLockoutTime	Gets the Nullable DateTime that specifies the date and time that the account was locked out. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	AdvancedSearchFilter	Returns an AdvancedSearchFilter object, for use with Query by Example to set read-only properties before passing the object to the PrincipalSearcher. (Overrides AuthenticablePrincipal..::.AdvancedSearchFilter.)
	AllowReversiblePasswordEncryption	Gets or sets a Boolean value that specifies whether reversible password encryption is enabled for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	BadLogonCount	Gets the number of logon attempts using incorrect credentials for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	Certificates	Gets a X509Certificate2Collection that contains the X509 certificates for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	Context	Gets a principal context that is associated with the principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	ContextRaw	Gets a principal context that is associated with this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	ContextType	Gets the context type enumeration value that specifies the type of principal context associated with this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	Current	Gets a user principal object that represents the current user under which the thread is running.
	DelegationPermitted	Gets or sets a Nullable Boolean value that specifies whether the account may be delegated. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	Description	Gets or sets the description of the principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	DisplayName	Gets or sets the display name for this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	DistinguishedName	Gets the distinguished name (DN) for this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	EmailAddress	Gets or sets the e-mail address for this account.
	EmployeeId	Gets or sets the employee ID for this user principal.
	Enabled	Gets or sets a Nullable Boolean value that specifies whether this account is enabled for authentication. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	GivenName	Gets or sets the given name for the user principal.
	Guid	Gets the GUID associated with this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	HomeDirectory	Gets or sets the home directory for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	HomeDrive	Gets or sets the home drive for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	LastBadPasswordAttempt	Gets the Nullable DateTime that specifies the date and time of the last incorrect password attempt on this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	LastLogon	Gets the Nullable DateTime that specifies the date and time of the last logon for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	LastPasswordSet	Gets the Nullable DateTime that specifies the last date and time that the password was set for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	MiddleName	Gets or sets the middle name for the user principal.
	Name	Gets or sets the name of this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	PasswordNeverExpires	Gets or sets a Boolean value that specifies whether the password expires for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	PasswordNotRequired	Gets or sets a Boolean value that specifies whether a password is required for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	PermittedLogonTimes	Gets or sets the times when the principal can logon. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	PermittedWorkstations	Gets the list of workstations that this principal is permitted to log into. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	SamAccountName	Gets or sets the SAM account name for this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	ScriptPath	Gets or sets the script path for this account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	Sid	Gets the Security ID (SID) of the principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	SmartcardLogonRequired	Gets or sets a Boolean value that specifies whether a smartcard is required to log on to the account. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	StructuralObjectClass	Gets the structural object class directory attribute. (Inherited from Principal.)
	Surname	Gets or sets the surname for the user principal.
	UserCannotChangePassword	Gets or sets a Boolean value that specifies whether the user can change the password for this account. Do not use this with a ComputerPrincipal. (Inherited from AuthenticablePrincipal.)
	UserPrincipalName	Gets or sets the user principal name (UPN) associated with this principal. (Inherited from Principal.)
	VoiceTelephoneNumber	Gets or sets the voice telephone number for the user principal.

Points of Interest

Some other interesting methods I found in there were ChangePassword, ExpirePasswordNow, GetGroups, UnlockAccount, SetPassword, and Save. I just haven't had the chance to check them out. Thanks .NET 3.5!

History

• Updated 9/23/09
• Added spiff on exception handling
• Updated code to use .DisplayName instead of .Name 


• Updated 12/07/12
• Fixed typo to UserPrincipal instead of UserPrinciple.