Application to copy a SharePoint Group

Question

As per this entry: Cloning a sharepoint rolegroup I'm trying to create a console application to copy a SharePoint group, including its permissions.

Based on the answer from Tjassens I've reached the following:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;  

namespace REGroupCopy
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            using (SPSite spSite = new SPSite("http://dev"))
            {
                using (SPWeb spWeb = spSite.RootWeb)
                {
                    // first we find the group that we want to clone
                    SPGroup group = spWeb.Groups["Test Group"];

                    // then we use this retreived group to get the roleassignments on the SPWeb object
                    SPRoleAssignment ass = spWeb.RoleAssignments.GetAssignmentByPrincipal(group);

                    string groupName = "Test Group 2"; // group to create
                    string groupDescription = "Group created by REGroupCopy";
                    string user = "michael";

                    spWeb.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, user, user, groupDescription);
                    SPGroup newGroup = spWeb.SiteGroups[groupName];
                    SPRoleAssignment roleAssignment = new SPRoleAssignment(newGroup);

                    //add role to web
                    spWeb.RoleAssignments.Add(roleAssignment);
                    spWeb.Update();
                }
            }         
        }
    }
}

Unfortunately I don't think I'm understanding everything correctly. Specifically, I think these lines are incorrect, but I'm unsure what they should be:

                string groupName = "Test Group 2"; // group to create
                string groupDescription = "Group created by REGroupCopy";
                string user = "michael";

                spWeb.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, user, user, groupDescription);

I don't necessarily need somebody to come along and fix this for me (after all ,this is a learning exercise). Instead, could you please help me to understand where my thought process is falling down and what I need to learn to rectify this?

Answer 1

You have found the correct problem with your code. When you call the following method:

spWeb.SiteGroups.Add(groupName, user, user, groupDescription); 

you forgot that the user should not be a string but an actual SPUser object. If you get the SPUser object you should be able to add the new group to the SPWeb/SPSite.

you can get the user object by using for instance:

SPUser spUser = spWeb.EnsureUser(loginName);