The CData Cmdlets Module for Active Directory is a standard
PowerShell module offering straightforward integration with Active Directory.
Below, you will
find examples of using our ActiveDirectory Cmdlets with native PowerShell cmdlets.
Creating a Connection to Your Active Directory Data
To establish a connection, set the following properties:
- Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., Domain\BobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
- Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.
BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.
Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.
$conn = Connect-AD -User "$User" -Password "$Password" -Server "$Server" -Port "$Port"
Selecting Data
Follow the steps below to retrieve data from the User table and pipe the result into to a CSV file:
Select-ActiveDirectory -Connection $conn -Table User | Select -Property * -ExcludeProperty Connection,Table,Columns | Export-Csv -Path c:\myUserData.csv -NoTypeInformation
You will notice that we piped the results from Select-ActiveDirectory into a Select-Object cmdlet and excluded some properties
before piping them into an Export-Csv cmdlet. We do this because the CData Cmdlets append Connection, Table, and
Columns information onto each "row" in the result set, and we do not necessarily want that information in our CSV file.
The Connection, Table, and Columns are appended to the results in order to facilitate piping results from one of the
CData Cmdlets directly into another one.
Deleting Data
The following line deletes any records that match the criteria:
Select-ActiveDirectory -Connection $conn -Table User -Where "CN = Administrator" | Remove-ActiveDirectory
Inserting and Updating Data
The cmdlets make data transformation easy as well as data cleansing. The following example loads data from a CSV file into Active Directory, checking first whether a record already exists and needs to be updated instead of inserted.
Import-Csv -Path C:\MyUserUpdates.csv | %{
$record = Select-ActiveDirectory -Connection $ActiveDirectory -Table User -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
if($record){
Update-ActiveDirectory -Connection $activedirectory -Table User -Columns ("Id","LogonCount") -Values ($_.Id, $_.LogonCount) -Where ("Id = `'"+$_.Id+"`'")
}else{
Add-ActiveDirectory -Connection $activedirectory -Table User -Columns ("Id","LogonCount") -Values ($_.Id, $_.LogonCount)
}
}
As always, our goal is to simplify the way you connect to data. With cmdlets users can install a data module, set the
connection properties, and start building. Download Cmdlets and start working
with your data in PowerShell today!