{"id":68463,"date":"2005-11-23T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-23T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2005\/11\/23\/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-all-the-groups-whose-name-starts-with-g-s-group\/"},"modified":"2005-11-23T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-23T15:00:00","slug":"how-can-i-get-a-list-of-all-the-groups-whose-name-starts-with-g-s-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-all-the-groups-whose-name-starts-with-g-s-group\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Get a List of All the Groups Whose Name Starts with G-S-Group?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey,<\/p>\n

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I use wildcards to get a list of all the groups whose name starts with G-S-Group?<\/p>\n

— JD<\/p>\n

\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey, JD. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and one of the Scripting Guys is headed out of town as soon as he finishes his Hey, Scripting Guy!<\/i> column. And what a coincidence: he happened to pick a question about searching Active Directory, the kind of column he could write in his sleep (and probably has).<\/p>\n

The reason Active Directory search columns are so easy to write is the fact that we cheat: we typically don’t explain the details behind such searches. Active Directory searches are actually pretty easy; after all, most of the code is boilerplate that doesn’t need to change from script-to-script. However, there is<\/i> a considerable amount of boilerplate code, and that requires explanation that goes beyond the scope of this little column. Therefore, we typically refer people to our two-part Tales from the Script<\/i> series Dude, Where’s My Printer?<\/strong><\/a> if they need more information about writing scripts to search Active Directory.<\/p>\n\n<\/thead>\n\n\n
\n

Note<\/strong>. You want to know how hard it is to be a Scripting Guy? Well, let’s see. This particular Scripting Guy writes a column that simply refers people to previously-written material. And then he celebrates Thanksgiving by making his mom do all the cooking. A very tough life indeed.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/div>\n

But we won’t be totally lazy; at least we’ll show you the code and explain how the query works. Here’s a script that returns all the groups whose Name starts with G-S-Group<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

On Error Resume Next\n\nConst ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE = 2\n\nSet objConnection = CreateObject(\"ADODB.Connection\")\nSet objCommand =   CreateObject(\"ADODB.Command\")\nobjConnection.Provider = \"ADsDSOObject\"\nobjConnection.Open \"Active Directory Provider\"\nSet objCommand.ActiveConnection = objConnection\n\nobjCommand.Properties(\"Page Size\") = 1000\nobjCommand.Properties(\"Searchscope\") = ADS_SCOPE_SUBTREE \n\nobjCommand.CommandText = _\n    \"SELECT Name FROM 'LDAP:\/\/DC=fabrikam,DC=com' WHERE objectCategory='group' \" & _\n        \"AND Name='G-S-Group*'\"\n\nSet objRecordSet = objCommand.Execute\n\nobjRecordSet.MoveFirst\nDo Until objRecordSet.EOF\n    Wscript.Echo objRecordSet.Fields(\"Name\").Value\n    objRecordSet.MoveNext\nLoop<\/span>\n<\/span><\/pre>\n
The part we’re interest<\/span>ed in is the SQL query that returns just those groups that meet our criteria (names starting with G-S-Group):<\/p>\n
\"SELECT Name FROM 'LDAP:\/\/DC=fabrikam,DC=com' WHERE objectCategory='group' \" & _\n        \"AND Name='G-S-Group*'\"<\/span>\n<\/pre>\n
As you can see, we need to specify two things in the Where clause: 1) the objectCategory<\/strong> must be equal to group<\/i> (that way, we make sure we get back only groups and not users, OUs, printers, or anything else found in Active Directory); and 2) the Name<\/strong> attribute must begin with the letters G-S-Group<\/i>. To specify the latter, we set the search value of Name to the desired string – G-S-Group<\/i> – followed by an asterisk (*), the asterisk being short for “anything.” What we’re saying here is pretty straightforward: “Show me all the groups whose name starts with G-S-Group; I don’t care what – if anything – comes after that.”<\/p>\n
You can’t get much more straightforward than that.<\/p>\n
If we wanted to search for groups whose Name ended<\/i> in G-S-Group we’d put the asterisk before the string:<\/p>\n
Name='*G-S-Group'<\/span>\n<\/pre>\n
That’s read as, “Show me all the groups whose name ends<\/i> with G-S-Group; I don’t care what – if anything – comes before that.” Or we could search for groups that have the string G-S-Group somewhere (anywhere) in their name. To do that, we put asterisks before and after the string:<\/p>\n
Name='*G-S-Group*'<\/span>\n<\/pre>\n
All part of the fun – and the utility – of using scripts to search Active Directory.<\/p>\n
As for us, there’s a turkey out there somewhere with our name on it. See you all again on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I use wildcards to get a list of all the groups whose name starts with G-S-Group? — JD Hey, JD. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and one of the Scripting Guys is headed out of town as soon as he finishes his Hey, Scripting Guy! column. And what a coincidence: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,3,8,5],"class_list":["post-68463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-active-directory","tag-scripting-guy","tag-searching-active-directory","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I use wildcards to get a list of all the groups whose name starts with G-S-Group? — JD Hey, JD. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and one of the Scripting Guys is headed out of town as soon as he finishes his Hey, Scripting Guy! column. And what a coincidence: […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}