a·gen·tic a·gil·i·ty

Loss of My.User.Name is not that bad...

TL;DR; Explains how to access and manage user and security information in .NET applications using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement instead of My.User.Name.

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1Imports System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

Loss of My.User.Name is not that bad... In WPF development you can’t just use the “My.User.Name” classes as it is not set by default. If you still want to use it you can “My.User.InitializeWithWindowsUser()” to have it setup, but there is a better way.

If you are using Active Directory .Net 3.5 has provided a new way to access information…

There is a new assembly called “System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement” that encapsulates all of the logic for accessing security information in a number of ways.

You can create a link to your local Active Directory  by calling:

1 Dim ctx As New PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain)

The options for conencting are:

These options allow for most security authentications in your .NET applications, and it does not stop with wrapping the top level AD. if you want to access and control a user you need only:

1Dim u As UserPrincipal = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, IdentityType.Sid, WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent.User.Value)

I really like this as often I have has to build and Google (more the later than the former) class library for manipulating Active Directory objects, and you need not just use the Sid. You can use:

And this is just the direct load of a user object. There are Group object as well as fill search capability with the PrincipalSearcher and various other bits and bobs…

Well thats my find of the day Loss of My.User.Name is not that bad...

Technorati Tags: .NET   WPF

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