writing powershell function with DirectorySearcher instead of get-adcomputer

Question

writing powershell function with DirectorySearcher instead of get-adcomputer

Thomas Garrity 22

I'm trying to convert my PowerShell function to use DirectorySearcher with the relevant filter, properties, etc. to find stale computers because Microsoft's Search-ADAccount is insufficient for what I need, and so I don't want my new function to rely on any underlying modules, i.e. get-adcomputer, because I heard it's best practice to rely as little as possible on external functions.

Here's the code I have thus far which seems to get me most of the way there, but I'm having trouble formatting the data into human-readable results that get-adcomputer does so nicely.

$FileTimeUTC = (get-date).adddays(-90).ToFileTimeUtc()
$Credential = get-credential 
$Searcher = new-object -typename system.directoryservices.directorysearcher
$Searcher.Filter = "(&(objectclass=computer)(operatingsystem=windows*)(!(primarygroupid=516))(!(operatingsystem=*server*))(lastlogontimestamp<=$filetimeutc))"
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('Name')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('Description')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('DistinguishedName')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('OperatingSystem')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('OperatingSystemServicePack')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('Created')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('PasswordLastSet')
$Searcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add('LastLogonDate')
$DomainDN=([adsisearcher]"").SearchRoot.Path
$domain = new-object -typename system.directoryservices.directoryentry -argumentlist $DomainDN, $Credential.UserName, $Credential.GetNetworkCredential().password
$searcher.searchroot = $domain
$objs = $searcher.findall()
return $objs

What I get is a mess with just Path and Properties, not in the format that I would normally get if I had instead used this:

get-adcomputer -filter * -properties Name,Description,DistinguishedName,OperatingSystem,OperatingSystemServicePack,Created,PasswordLastSet,LastLogonDate

Need help formatting the results in $objs if possible. Thank you in advance!

Thomas Garrity 22 Reputation points

2020-12-23T05:16:18.317+00:00

to be more specific with the mess that I'm getting, see below:

Path Properties

LDAP://CN=Comp1,OU=Windows,DC=example,DC=local {distinguishedname,name,operatingsystem,adspath}

I'm hoping to instead see something like this:

Name distinguishedName OperatingSystem description Created

Comp1 CN=Comp1,OU=Windows,DC=example,DC=local Windows 10 Test PC 10/11/2020

you get the point.
Rich Matheisen 47,901 Reputation points

2020-12-23T20:11:10.467+00:00

Try that Get-ADComputer with just one computer name and then pipe the result into Get-Member. Close to the top of the output you'll see the TypeName. PowerShell had done all the work of packaging up the data in an easy to use object.

Now have a look at one of entries in "$objs". They're hardly the same thing, are they?

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Thomas Garrity 22 Reputation points

2020-12-23T05:16:18.317+00:00

to be more specific with the mess that I'm getting, see below:

Path Properties

LDAP://CN=Comp1,OU=Windows,DC=example,DC=local {distinguishedname,name,operatingsystem,adspath}

I'm hoping to instead see something like this:

Name distinguishedName OperatingSystem description Created

Comp1 CN=Comp1,OU=Windows,DC=example,DC=local Windows 10 Test PC 10/11/2020

you get the point.
Rich Matheisen 47,901 Reputation points

2020-12-23T20:11:10.467+00:00

Try that Get-ADComputer with just one computer name and then pipe the result into Get-Member. Close to the top of the output you'll see the TypeName. PowerShell had done all the work of packaging up the data in an easy to use object.

Now have a look at one of entries in "$objs". They're hardly the same thing, are they?

Answer 1

Hi,

The properties are stored in a hashtable and you can format the output as follows

$name = @{n="Name";e={$_.properties.'name'}}  
$distinguishedName = @{n="distinguishedName";e={$_.properties.'distinguishedname'}}  
$operatingSystem = @{n="OperatingSystem";e={$_.properties.'operatingsystem'}}  
$description = @{n="Description";e={$_.properties.'description'}}  
$objs | Select-Object -Property $name, $distinguishedName, $operatingSystem, $description

Best Regards，
Ian Xue

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Answer 2

Thomas Garrity 22

Sorry but this isn't making any sense to me. you're using $_. which would imply you're piping from foreach-object, but I'm still not understanding how to build the new array.

Rich Matheisen 47,901 Reputation points

2020-12-23T20:05:09.19+00:00
$_ just represents the current object in the pipeline. In other words, the object from $objs currently being processed by the Select-Object.

IanXue-MSFT's example is correct. Here's a simpler version of the same technique:

[PSCustomObject]@{a=1;b=2}, [PSCustomObject]@{a=3;b=4} | Select-Object @{n = "Letter A"; e = {$_.a}}, @{n = "Letter B"; e = {$_.b}}
Thomas Garrity 22 Reputation points

2020-12-23T21:13:29.897+00:00
Sorry I wasn't implying it wasn't correct. What I wasn't aware is that the property names are actually case sensitive in $_.properties.name, for instance. Heck, I'm not even sure where those lower case property names case from, because that's not how they are represented in AD, and that's not how I had called them in PropertiesToLoad in the preceding code, and also wasn't aware that would even be an issue as my experience of working with property names is not case sensitive.

The other thing that I'm trying to wrap my head around is converting pwdlastset and lastlogontimestamp to datetime data types. I would normally do something like this:

$pwdlastset = [datetime]::FromFileTimeUtc($_.Properties.pwdlastset)

And then add that value to an add-member statement, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that sort of thing with this method.
Thomas Garrity 22 Reputation points

2020-12-23T21:14:02.567+00:00

And an oddity I've noticed is when I pipe the results to get-member, the definition for each of the properties is unexpected.
an example:

Name MemberType Definition

Name NoteProperty System.String Name=Comp1
OperatingSystem NoteProperty System.String operatingsystem=Windows 10 Enterprise

But when I run get-adcomputer comp1 | get-member, I get a more regular looking list that does not have any of the value information in the member definition on each property.

Name MemberType Definition

Name NoteProperty System.String
OperatingSystem NoteProperty System.String

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writing powershell function with DirectorySearcher instead of get-adcomputer

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