Create Windows accounts and set file permissions from ASP.NET site

Question

I'm building an ASP.NET application, which will create Windows accounts and groups on the server, and set file/folder permissions for those accounts.

How do I accomplish that?

I've considered shelling out to CACLS.exe, but I got a feeling that's going to get me into other problems eventually. Are there any other options in the .NET framework?

Answer 1

One way in which I've achieved something similar. That is where some operation or process requires administrative privileges and you're trying to do this via ASP.NET is to build a WCF service application (ideally as a self hosted service) and have it running as Administrator.

Then from your ASP.NET application you call methods in your service and it works.

EDIT

Here is the code to make a console application a WCF self hosted application

  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      var webServiceHhost = new WebServiceHost(typeof(AppCmdService), new Uri("http://localhost:7654"));
      ServiceEndpoint ep = webServiceHhost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(AppCmdService), new WebHttpBinding(), "");
      var serviceDebugBehavior = webServiceHhost.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceDebugBehavior>();
      serviceDebugBehavior.HttpHelpPageEnabled = false;
      webServiceHhost.Open();
      Console.WriteLine("Service is running");
      Console.WriteLine("Press enter to quit ");
      Console.ReadLine();
      webServiceHhost.Close(); 
    }
  }

The class AppCmdService in the code listing above is my WCF service class

Answer 2

It seems it's the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement Namespace I'm looking for. I'm going to wrap that up nicely in a WCF service (thanks, Shiv Kumar ) and call that from my app.