C# Learning - Creating new AD accounts

I've been coding in PowerShell for 2 years now, and I gotta say switching over to C# is a nightmare! I do like it though, its has been a great fun experience. Once I got past the whole "Hello world" tutorials and learning the syntax it got a lot more fun. I'm not that I'm an expert in any way, but I believe I'm starting to get a hang of what is going on, which makes me happy.

Today as part of my on going project I had to create a function to create AD users through C#, and I'm using System.DirectoryServices class which actually requires that you add each property to the user, but doesn't actually tell you what does properties are, so after some looking around I found a table in this article. It made it a lot simpler than trying to guess the names. Here is the table for those that just want to get a quick look:

LDAP Attribute	Example
C	Country: e.g GB for Great Britain.
CN - Common Name	CN=Guy Thomas.  Actually, this LDAP attribute can be made up from givenName joined to SN.
CN	Maps to 'Name' in the LDAP provider. Remember CN is a mandatory property.  See also sAMAccountName.
description	What you see in Active Directory Users and Computers.  Not to be confused with displayName on the Users property sheet.
displayName	displayName = Guy Thomas.  If you script this property, be sure you understand which field you are configuring.  DisplayName can be confused with CN or description.
DN - also distinguishedName	DN is simply the most important LDAP attribute. CN=Jay Jamieson, OU= Newport,DC=cp,DC=com
givenName	Firstname also called Christian name
homeDrive	Home Folder : connect.  Tricky to configure
initials	Useful in some cultures.
name	name = Guy Thomas.  Exactly the same as CN.
objectCategory	Defines the Active Directory Schema category. For example, objectCategory = Person
objectClass	objectClass = User.  Also used for Computer, organizationalUnit, even container.  Important top level container.
physicalDeliveryOfficeName	Office! on the user's General property sheet
postOfficeBox	P.O. box.
profilePath	Roaming profile path: connect.  Trick to set up
sAMAccountName	This is a mandatory property, sAMAccountName = guyt.  The old NT 4.0 logon name, must be unique in the domain.
sAMAccountName	If you are using an LDAP provider 'Name' automatically maps to sAMAcountName and CN. The default value is same as CN, but can be given a different value.
SN	SN = Thomas. This would be referred to as last name or surname.
title	Job title.  For example Manager.
userAccountControl	Used to disable an account.  A value of 514 disables the account, while 512 makes the account ready for logon.
userPrincipalName	userPrincipalName = guyt@CP.com  Often abbreviated to UPN, and looks like an email address.  Very useful for logging on especially in a large Forest.  Note UPN must be unique in the forest.
wWWHomePage	User's home page.
Examples of Exchange Specific LDAP attributes
homeMDB	Here is where you set the MailStore
legacyExchangeDN	Legacy distinguished name for creating Contacts. In the following example, Guy Thomas is a Contact in the first administrative group of GUYDOMAIN: /o=GUYDOMAIN/ou=first administrative group/cn=Recipients/cn=Guy Thomas
mail	An easy, but important attribute.  A simple SMTP address is all that is required billyn@ourdom.com
mAPIRecipient - FALSE	Indicates that a contact is not a domain user.
mailNickname	Normally this is the same value as the sAMAccountName, but could be different if you wished.  Needed for mail enabled contacts.
mDBUseDefaults	Another straightforward field, just the value to:True
msExchHomeServerName	Exchange needs to know which server to deliver the mail.  Example: /o=YourOrg/ou=First Administrative Group/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=MailSrv
proxyAddresses	As the name 'proxy' suggests, it is possible for one recipient to have more than one email address.  Note the plural spelling of proxyAddresses.
targetAddress	SMTP:@ e-mail address.  Note that SMTP is case sensitive.  All capitals means the default address.
showInAddressBook	Displays the contact in the Global Address List.
c	Country or Region
company	Company or organization name
department	Useful category to fill in and use for filtering
homephone	Home Phone number, (Lots more phone LDAPs)
l  (Lower case L)	L = Location.  City ( Maybe Office
location	Important, particularly for printers and computers.
manager	Boss, manager
mobile	Mobile Phone number
ObjectClass	Usually, User, or Computer
OU	Organizational unit.  See also DN
pwdLastSet	Force users to change their passwords at next logon
postalCode	Zip or post code
st	State, Province or County
streetAddress	First line of address
telephoneNumber	Office Phone
userAccountControl	Enable (512) / disable account (514)
»
Examples of Obscure LDAP Attributes
dNSHostname
rID
url
uSNCreated, uSNChanged

I removed the Ads because I'm not sure if they would affect his stuff. 

Here is the difference in code from creating users in PowerShell and in C#:

PowerShell * In this particular example I'm taking the values from a CSV, which allows me to create multiple accounts very quickly. 

//This is needed Import-Module ActiveDirectory New-ADUser -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText "PASSWORDHERE" -Force) -Server 'DCHOSTNAME' `         -Enabled $true `         -Name $file.username `         -GivenName $file.name `         -Surname $file.lastname `         -Initials $file.middle `         -DisplayName $file.displayname `         -SamAccountName $file.username `         -Office $file.office `         -Department $file.Department `         -Company $file.company `         -StreetAddress $file.Street `         -City $file.city `         -State $file.state `         -PostalCode $file.postalcode `         -Country $file.country  `         -Description $file.description `         -Path $file.path `         -UserPrincipalName $file.userprincipalname `         -EmailAddress $file.userprincipalname `         -OtherAttributes @{'co'="United States"; 'countryCode'="840"}

C# * Please note that I am passing the variables from the "OnClick" function for a button, and also that all the properties name are not provided to you as they are in PowerShell. Final note there is some parameters that have not yet been used as they will be added at a later point when I create the mailbox. 

//These are required using System.DirectoryServices; using System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory; public void createUser(int ticketnumber, string firstname, string middleIn, string lastName,  string samaccountname, string email, string telephone, string hemisphere, string company,  string office, string address, string city, string state, string division, string Code,  string OrganizationalUnit, string country, string department, string title, string displayName,  string postalCode, string co, string Manager)         {             string path = "LDAP://" + OrganizationalUnit;             int NORMAL_ACCOUNT = 0x200;             int PWD_NOTREQD = 0x20;             try             {                 using (DirectoryEntry ou = new DirectoryEntry(path))                 {                     DirectoryEntry user = ou.Children.Add("CN=" + samaccountname, "user");                     user.Properties["SamAccountName"].Add(samaccountname);                     user.Properties["userPrincipalName"].Add(samaccountname + "@DOMAIN");                     user.Properties["name"].Add(firstname + " " + lastName);                     user.Properties["givenName"].Add(firstname);                     user.Properties["initials"].Add(middleIn);                     user.Properties["SN"].Add(lastName);                     user.Properties["telephoneNumber"].Add(telephone);                     user.Properties["company"].Add(company);                     user.Properties["physicalDeliveryOfficeName"].Add(office);                     user.Properties["streetAddress"].Add(address);                     user.Properties["l"].Add(city);                     user.Properties["st"].Add(state);                     user.Properties["co"].Add(country);                     user.Properties["C"].Add(co);                     user.Properties["department"].Add(department);                     user.Properties["title"].Add(title);                     user.Properties["userAccountControl"].Value = NORMAL_ACCOUNT | PWD_NOTREQD;                     user.Properties["description"].Add("AC #" + ticketnumber + " JB | Created with JBSoftware");                     user.Properties["displayName"].Add(displayName);                     user.Properties["objectCategory"].Add("PERSON");                     user.Properties["postalCode"].Add(postalCode);                     user.Properties["manager"].Add(Manager);                     user.CommitChanges();                 }             }             catch (System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException E)             {                 MessageBox.Show(E, "ERROR!", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);                 throw;             }        }

Well I think that is it for the day, I hope that this information might be useful to someone out there!

Edit >
It seems that I forgot a simple o in the Country property. (see in bold)