Can I use NetUserGetInfo in C#?

Question

I want to use http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370654%28VS.85%29.aspx in my code. But for some reason I cannot find what namespace to use for it. Three that I thought would work are

using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.DirectoryServices;

But none of these work. All of the examples of using NetUserGetInfo I can find are in C++, rather than C#. That makes me think that maybe I cannot use it in C#. Can I? And if so, what namespace I should use to have access to the NetUserGetInfo function? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

What namespace are you looking for? Namespaces are .NET specific notions. The NetUserGetInfo is a Win32 unmanaged function. If you want to invoke it from managed .NET code you need to write a managed wrapper and call it through P/Invoke.

Here's a useful site in this case which illustrates the following managed wrapper:

[DllImport("Netapi32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling=true)]
private extern static int NetUserGetInfo(
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string ServerName,
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string UserName, 
    int level, 
    out IntPtr BufPtr
);

A user defined structure:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public struct USER_INFO_10
{
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)]
    public string usri10_name;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)]
    public string usri10_comment;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)]
    public string usri10_usr_comment;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)]
    public string usri10_full_name;
}

and a sample invocation:

public bool AccountGetFullName(string MachineName, string AccountName, ref string FullName) 
{
    if (MachineName.Length == 0 ) 
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("Machine Name is required");
    }
    if (AccountName.Length == 0 ) 
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("Account Name is required");
    }
    try 
    {
        // Create an new instance of the USER_INFO_1 struct
        USER_INFO_10 objUserInfo10 = new USER_INFO_10();
        IntPtr bufPtr; // because it's an OUT, we don't need to Alloc
        int lngReturn = NetUserGetInfo(MachineName, AccountName, 10, out bufPtr ) ;
        if (lngReturn == 0) 
        {
            objUserInfo10 = (USER_INFO_10) Marshal.PtrToStructure(bufPtr, typeof(USER_INFO_10) );
            FullName = objUserInfo10.usri10_full_name;
        }
        NetApiBufferFree( bufPtr );
        bufPtr = IntPtr.Zero;
        if (lngReturn == 0 ) 
        {
            return true;
        }
        else 
        {
            //throw new System.ApplicationException("Could not get user's Full Name.");
            return false;
        }
    } 
    catch (Exception exp)
    {
        Debug.WriteLine("AccountGetFullName: " + exp.Message);
        return false;
    }
}