VB and loathing: in search of an SID

Seems that once every six months or so I have to brush off my VB6 knowlegde to get some work done. Have I mentioned I hate VB6. Did I mention I REALLY hate VB6 when I have to make calls to the Win32 API.

So the reason for my displeasure at this point was I need to get any domain users SID (Security ID). BTW: you can't seem to get this in .NET either, without going back to into the Win32 API -- no nice OO wrapper goodness for this one. How fun.

The particular API I am using actually requires one to be able to add a user. It is part of their security process. Lovely. So after a day of searching through the bowels of Google, I found my answer -- not all in one place. No, that would be too easy.

So, if any of you are needing a user's SID and are playing with the LookupAccountName and ConvertSidToStringSid APIs from VB6, here is some help.

Private Declare Function ConvertSidToStringSid Lib "ADVAPI32.dll" Alias "ConvertSidToStringSidA" (ByVal Sid As String, ByRef lpStringSid As Long) As Long Private Declare Function IsValidSid Lib "ADVAPI32.dll" (ByRef pSid As Any) As Long Private Declare Function LookupAccountName Lib "ADVAPI32.dll" Alias "LookupAccountNameA" (ByVal lpSystemName As String, ByVal lpAccountName As String, ByVal Sid As String, ByRef cbSid As Long, ByVal ReferencedDomainName As String, ByRef cbReferencedDomainName As Long, ByRef peUse As Long) As Long Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32.dll" Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (ByRef Destination As Any, ByRef Source As Any, ByVal Length As Long) Private Declare Function GlobalFree Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hMem As Long) As Long Private Declare Function LocalAlloc Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal wFlags As Long, ByVal wBytes As Long) As Long Private Declare Function LocalFree Lib "kernel32.dll" (ByVal hMem As Long) As Long Private Sub Command1_Click() MsgBox GetSid("DOMAIN\USER") End Sub Private Function GetSid(accountName As String) As String Dim userName As String Dim UserNameSize As Long Dim Sid As String Dim SidSize As Long Dim Domain As String Dim DomainSize As Long Dim snu As Long Dim sReturn As String userName = String$(255, 0&) Sid = String$(255, 0&) Domain = String$(255, 0&) sReturn = String$(255, 0&) UserNameSize = 255 SidSize = 255 DomainSize = 255 Call LookupAccountName(vbNullString, accountName, Sid, SidSize, Domain, DomainSize, snu) If IsValidSid(ByVal Sid) = 0& Then Exit Function Call ConvertSidToStringSid(Sid, snu) Call CopyMemory(ByVal sReturn, ByVal snu, 255) sReturn = Left$(sReturn, InStr(vbNull, sReturn, vbNullChar, vbBinaryCompare) - vbNull) Call GlobalFree(snu) GetSid = sReturn End Function