pyad 0.4.9

An Object-Oriented Active Directory management framework built on ADSI

Introduction
------------

pyad is a python library designed to provide a simple, object oriented interface to Active Directory through ADSI on the Windows platform. pyad requires pywin32, available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32.

pyad is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is available at <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Basics
------

Active Directory objects are represented by standard python objects. There are classes for all major types of Active Directory objects: ADComputer, ADContainer, ADDomain, ADGroup, ADUser, all of which inherit from ADObject. It is possible to connect to objects via CN, DN, and GUID. Example:

import pyad
u = pyad.aduser.ADUser.from_cn("user1")
c = pyad.adcomputer.ADComputer.from_dn("cn=WS1,ou=Workstations,dc=domain,dc=com")
g = pyad.adgroup.ADGroup.from_cn("group1")

It is possible to read attribute values in two ways.

print u.displayName
print u.get_attribute("displayName")

Attributes can be set by calling clear_attribute, update_attribute, update_attributes, append_to_attribute, and remove_from_attribute. Example:

u.update_attribute("displayName", "new value")

There are other helper methods available for managing attributes. We provide further examples below for common actions for each object type.

Group Examples
--------------

1. Finding group members:

for object in g.get_members(recursive=False):
print object

2. Adding an object to a group:

g.add_members(u)
or
u.add_to_group(g)

3. Set group scope:

g.set_group_scope("UNIVERSAL")

User Examples
-------------

1. Set password:

u.set_password("new_plaintext_password")

2. Force password change on login:

u.force_pwd_change_on_login()

Container Examples
------------------

1. Find all objects in an OU:

ou = pyad.adcontainer.ADContainer.from_dn("OU=Workstations,DC=company,DC=com")
for obj in ou.get_children():
print obj

2. Recursively find all computers below a certain OU:

for c in ou.get_children(recursive=True, filter=[pyad.adcomputer.ADComputer]):
print c

Creating Objects
----------------

It is possible to create objects through pyad. Example:

ou = pyad.adcontainer.ADContainer.from_dn("OU=Workstations,DC=company,DC=com")
c = pyad.adcomputer.ADComputer.create(
name = 'myworkstation2',
container_object = ou,
enable = True,
optional_attributes = dict(
description = "newly created computer"
)
)

Querying
--------

It is also possible to make queries to find objects. Example:

q = pyad.adquery.ADQuery()
q.execute_query(
attributes = ['distinguishedname', 'description'],
where_clause = "cn like 'ws%'",
base_dn = "dc=company,dc=com"
)
for r in q.get_results():
print r['distinguishedname']