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. The type will automatically be selected at runtime. Example:

from pyad import pyad
u = pyad.from_cn("user1")
c = pyad.from_dn("cn=WS1,ou=Workstations,dc=domain,dc=com")
g = pyad.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']