Displaying thumbnailPhoto from Active Directory on a web page

August 16th, 2011 by Geoff Kendal No Comments

In my Exchange 2010 environment, we’re using the thumbnailPhoto attribute in active directory, so that users photos appear in Outlook 2010. We also have a custom intranet page that features a company directory which pulls details such as phone numbers from AD. I wanted to also add in the image stored in thumbnailPhoto for each user, so started to create a way of extracting the image that could be used in a web page.

I ended up with a C# ASP page, called userPhoto.aspx with the following contents:

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<%@ OutputCache Duration="6000" VaryByParam="u" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.DirectoryServices" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<script runat="server">

    private void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        String myUser = Request.QueryString["u"];

        if (myUser == null)
            Response.Redirect("app_graphics/user.jpg");

        Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
        Response.Clear();
        Response.BufferOutput = true;

        DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry();
        de.Path = "LDAP://OU=Users,DC=domain,DC=local";

        DirectorySearcher search = new DirectorySearcher();
        search.SearchRoot = de;
        search.Filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(objectCategory=person)(sAMAccountName=" + myUser + "))";
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("samaccountname");
        search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("thumbnailPhoto");

        SearchResult user;
        user = search.FindOne();

        String userName;
        if (user == null)
            Response.Redirect("app_graphics/user.jpg");
        else
            userName = (String)user.Properties["sAMAccountName"][0];

        try
        {
            byte[] bb = (byte[])user.Properties["thumbnailPhoto"][0];
            Response.BinaryWrite(bb);
            Response.Flush();
        }
        catch
        {
            Response.Redirect("app_graphics/user.jpg");
        }

    }

</script>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title>userImage</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    </form>
</body>
</html>

You can then use the file by passing a parameter of u on a HTTP GET request, containing the users sAMAccountName.

For example, <img src=’userPhoto.aspx?u=gkendal’/>. Also, don’t forget to set the OU of where your user objects are in AD on line 21, and to add a placeholder image for those users that dont have anything stored in thier thumbnailPhoto attribute!

Posted in Programming, Scripting |

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