BSonPoSH

The other day a friend asked me how I would get Active Directory Schema information using Powershell. I knew of the schema property on the DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest class and that is where I started.

Initially I just called the static method GetCurrentForest on the Forest class and then accessed the schema using the property like this.

$Forest = [DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest]::GetCurrentForest()
$Forest.Schema

This worked find and gave me the Schema object I was after but information I got back was minimal. It only returned Schema Role Owner and the Distinguished Name. I found that if you want to get real data like the classes and properties you needed to call methods on object (DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.ActiveDirectorySchema) returned from Schema property.

At this point it is not all that complicated but I thought it would be nice to have functions that would abstract all this.

Below is a couple of functions you may find useful. They work both V1 and V2 of Powershell.

Get-Forest : Gets the Forest Object
- DomainController [optional] - DNS Name of the Host to connect to
- Credential [optional] - Network credentials to use.

Get-ADSchema : Gets the Schema
- DomainController [optional] - DNS Name of the Host to connect to
- Credential [optional] - Network credentials to use.

Get-ADSchemaClass : Gets a specific Schema Class
- Class [optional] - Class Object to get (Default is all)
- DomainController [optional] - DNS Name of the Host to connect to
- Credential [optional] - Network credentials to use.

Get-ADSchemaProperty : Gets a specific Schema Property
- Property [optional] - Property to get (Default is all)
- DomainController [optional] - DNS Name of the Host to connect to
- Credential [optional] - Network credentials to use.

NOTE: These will be included in my "Soon to be available" BSONPOSH module (v2 only.)

function Get-Forest
{
    Param($DomainController,[Management.Automation.PSCredential]$Credential)
 
    if(!$DomainController)
    {
        [DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest]::GetCurrentForest()
        return
    }
 
    if($Creds)
    {
        $Context = new-object DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DirectoryContext("DirectoryServer",$DomainController,$Creds.UserName,$Creds.GetNetworkCredential().Password)
    }
    else
    {
        $Context = new-object DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DirectoryContext("DirectoryServer",$DomainController)
    }
    [DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Forest]::GetForest($Context)
}

function Get-ADSchema
{
    Param($DomainController,[Management.Automation.PSCredential]$Credential)
    if($DomainController -and !$Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController
    }
    elseif($DomainController -and $Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController -Credential $Credential
    }
    else
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest
    }
    $Forest.Schema
}

function Get-ADSchemaClass
{
    Param($Class = ".*",$DomainController,[Management.Automation.PSCredential]$Credential)
 
    if($DomainController -and !$Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController
    }
    elseif($DomainController -and $Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController -Credential $Credential
    }
    else
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest
    }
 
    $Forest.Schema.FindAllClasses() | ?{$_.Name -match "^$Class`$"}
}

function Get-ADSchemaProperty
{
    Param($Property = ".*",$DomainController,[Management.Automation.PSCredential]$Credential)
 
    if($DomainController -and !$Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController
    }
    elseif($DomainController -and $Credential)
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest -DNSName $DomainController -Credential $Credential
    }
    else
    {
        $Forest = Get-Forest
    }
 
    $Forest.Schema.FindAllProperties() | ?{$_.Name -match "^$Property`$"}
 
}

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