writing powershell function with DirectorySearcher instead of get-adcomputer

Question

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!

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

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.