How to save a user picture in Active Directory with vbScript?

Active Directory offers the possibility to save pictures in a user’s object. These pictures can then be used in Outlook, Sharepoint or even self-written applications. Here is how you can do it:

Function SavePictureToAdFromUrl(szADsPath, szUrl)
	Dim objUser, bytesRead, adoStreamRead
	Const adTypeBinary = 1
	
	Set xml = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
	xml.Open "GET", szUrl, False
	xml.Send
	
	If xml.status = 200 Then
		Set adoStreamRead = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
		adoStreamRead.Type = adTypeBinary
		adoStreamRead.Open
		adoStreamRead.Write xml.responseBody
		adoStreamRead.Position = 0
		bytesRead = adoStreamRead.Read()
		adoStreamRead.Close
	 
		Set objUser = GetObject(szADsPath)
		objUser.Put "thumbnailPhoto", bytesRead
		objUser.SetInfo
	End If
End Function

This function will read a picture resource from a url (szUrl) and append it to the thumbnailPhoto attribute in the user object identified by szADsPath.
First we open the url and see if we’ll get a status 200 (OK). If so a binary stream object is created and the picture data from the url is written into it. After that we transfer the data from the stream object into a variable, then we create an object from the given szADsPath and finally put the content of the bytesRead variable into the thumbnailPhoto attribute of the user object.
If you do not have a website providing the picture you can do this also with files on a file system.

Function SavePictureToAD(szADsPath, szLoadFileName)
	Dim objUser, bytesRead, adoStreamRead
	Const adTypeBinary = 1
 
	Set adoStreamRead = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
	adoStreamRead.Type = adTypeBinary
	adoStreamRead.Open
	adoStreamRead.LoadFromFile szLoadFileName
	bytesRead = adoStreamRead.Read()
	adoStreamRead.Close
 
	Set objUser = GetObject(szADsPath)
	objUser.Put "thumbnailPhoto", bytesRead
	objUser.SetInfo
End Function

This one is almost the same function, but it does not expect an url as parameter but a filename – the rest of the function stays the same.

When using one of these functions please make sure that the resource identified by either url or filename is a valid picture file like jpeg or png. Neither Active Directory nor my functions will validate the files!
Please also note that the attribute thumbnailPhoto is for thumbnails – therefor you should use small pictures. Recommended are jpeg pictures with dimensions of 128×128 pixels an a size not exceeding 10KB. The limit of the thumbnailPhoto attribute is 100KB.