How to pipe Active Directory Data to CSV in PowerShell

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!