As I am new to C# programming in general i am finding it very difficult to accomplish the following.

I have simple widow’s forms program with a text box, button and a list box. I need to be able to enter in a group name into the txt box and have all the users of the group be returned into the list box.

I have been going nuts trying to understand Windows Directory Services etc.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Peter

Peter,

   Do you need to use LDAP for this particular task; it may be easier to use WMI -- however this will only work on windows hosts. I don't know the name of the object you want to query off the top of my head, but if you can track it down, here's the rest ( I'm pulling this from an app I wrote to pull process info, but the theory is the same):

         1). Create a ConnectionOptions Object

         ConnectionOptions oConn = new ConnectionOptions();
    if(!chkTrusted.Checked){
            oConn.Username = txtUsername.Text;
            oConn.Password = txtPassword.Text;
     }
   The default behavior is to construct an object with the currently logged in users credentials ... the if statement referes to controlls on the form that allow you to specify a different user (very usefull in a web context).

       System.Management.ManagementScope oMs = new System.Management.ManagementScope("\\\\" + txtComputername.Text + "\\root\\cimv2" , oConn);

System.Management.ObjectQuery oQuery = new System.Management.ObjectQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_Process");
        ManagementObjectSearcher oSearcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(oMs, oQuery);
        try{
            ManagementObjectCollection oReturnCollection = oSearcher.Get();

            foreach(ManagementObject oReturn in oReturnCollection){
                // name of process
                txtOutput.AppendText( oReturn["Name"].ToString().ToLower() + "\n");
                // arg to send with method invoke to return user and domain
                string[] o = new String[2];
                // Invoke the method and populate the o var with the user name and domain
                oReturn.InvokeMethod("GetOwner",(object[])o);
                // write out user info that was returned
                txtOutput.AppendText("User: " + o[1] + "\\" + o[0]);
                txtOutput.AppendText("PID: " + oReturn["ProcessId"].ToString());
                // get priority
                if(oReturn["Priority"] != null)
                    txtOutput.AppendText("Priority: " + oReturn["Priority"].ToString());
                // this is the amount of memory used
                if(oReturn["WorkingSetSize"] != null){
                    long mem = Convert.ToInt64(oReturn["WorkingSetSize"].ToString()) / 1024;
                    txtOutput.AppendText("Mem Usage: " + mem.ToString());
                }
            }
        }catch (System.Management.ManagementException me){
                txtOutput.AppendText(me.ToString());
            }
        }


All you have to do to adapt this code too your needs is to replace the WQL "SELECT * FROM Win32_Process" with one that queries users ... i.e. "SELECT * FROM <whatever_user_object>" and then, in the for loop, you would do like an:
(pseudo code; will not compile)
  ArrayList lstUsersInGroup = new ArrayList();
  ...
   if (objUser.Group == txtGroup.text) lstUsersInGroup.Add(objUser);
  ...

HTH

Regards,
Meredith Shaebanyan