Remove all user from group and add new ones from TXT

Question

Hi Guys,
I'm trying to clean all users from Local Group test_group, and next new bunch of users form TXT fiel, by executing the following script as a scheduled task

Import-Module Adaxes
# Remove old users from the group
Get-AdmGroupMember "test_group" -AdaxesService localhost | ForEach-Object {Remove-AdmGroupMember "documents-users" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -AdaxesService localhost $_ -Confirm:$false}

# Get list of new members from TXT and add them to the gorup
$web = New-Object Net.WebClient
$web.DownloadString("https://server.contoso.com/users.txt") | Out-File "C:\userlist.txt"
$users = Get-Content "C:\userlist.txt"
foreach ($user in $users) {

Add-AdmGroupMember -Identity "test_group" -Members $user -AdaxesService localhost  
}

Remove-Item ""C:\userlist.txt"

Everything is looks fine, but sometimes I get error message "Requested service not find", also this script is quite slow. In the userlist.txt I have only 600 users. Do you have any idea how to improve this script?

Answer 1

You don't need to iterate through the lists, because the -Members parameter takes an array. I tested this on my system and it worked, so I believe it will work for you. The only part I couldn't test was getting the userlist from a web page, but you should be able to assign that to a variable with Out-String and not need to use the intermediate file. You *might* have to do something like:
$users = $users.trim()
In case there are trailing spaces on the user list.

Note also that the remove could be a single line, but it throws an error if the group is empty:
Remove-AdmGroupMember -AdaxesService $admService -Identity $groupName -Confirm:$false -Members (Get-AdmGroupMember -Identity $groupName -AdaxesService $admService)

Import-Module Adaxes

$groupName = 'test_group'
$admService = 'localhost'

# Remove old users from the group
$members = Get-AdmGroupMember -Identity $groupName -AdaxesService $admService
if ($members) {
    Remove-AdmGroupMember -AdaxesService $admService -Identity $groupName -Confirm:$false  -Members $members
} 

# Get list of new members from TXT and add them to the gorup
$web = New-Object Net.WebClient
$users = $web.DownloadString("https://server.contoso.com/users.txt") | Out-String

# Add users to group
Add-AdmGroupMember -AdaxesService $admService -Identity $groupName -Confirm:$false -Members $users

Best Regards,
Scott Kuntzelman
Electrolux North America

Comments

Hello,

Scott is right that Add-AdmGroupMember cmdlet accepts a String[] array for the -Members parameter, the same as Remove-AdmGroupMember, and this fact gives you certain advantages. If you add members to a group in a foreach loop, you add the members one-by-one. However, if you pass an array to the -Members parameter, the cmdlet will add all the members at once, which should give you a certain performance boost.

However, there is a small error in Scott's post. The thing is that when you read your file using the Net.WebClient::DownloadString method, you receive a multi-line string, not an array. Scott's will work as long as you have 1 user in the text file, but won't work if there are multiple users specified, because the Add-AdmGroupMember cmdlet will consider the whole of the string as a single member that you want to add.

So, before passing the new members to the Add-AdmGroupMember cmdlet, you need to convert the multiline string into a String[] array.

Find below a version of the script that does the job.

Import-Module Adaxes

$groupName = 'test_group'
$admService = 'localhost'

# Get new users
$web = New-Object Net.WebClient
$users = $web.DownloadString("https://server.contoso.com/users.txt")

if (-not [System.String]::IsNullOrEmpty($users))
{
    # Remove empty lines
    $users = $users -replace '\s+\r\n+', "`r`n"

    # Convert to a String[] array
    $reader = New-Object System.IO.StringReader($users)
    $newMembers = @()
    while ($True)
    {
        $line = $reader.Readline()
        if (-not ($line))
        {
            break
        }
        $newMembers += $line.Trim()
    }

    # Get current group members
    $group = Get-AdmGroup $groupName -AdaxesService $admService -Properties member
    $members = $group.member
    if ($members)
    {
        # Remove old users from the group
        Remove-AdmGroupMember $group -Members $members -Confirm:$false -AdaxesService $admService
    }

    # Add users to group
    Add-AdmGroupMember $group -Members $newMembers -Confirm:$false -AdaxesService $admService
}

---

I was afraid of that. ;) I don't have a handy webserver to test downloading the file from the web, so wasn't entirely sure. I'm going to grab your copy of the script for my library.