How to call NetUserModalsGet() from C#.NET?

EDIT: followup at NetUserModalsGet() returns strings incorrectly for C#.NET

I'm struggling with the DLL declarations for this function:

NET_API_STATUS NetUserModalsGet( __in LPCWSTR servername, __in DWORD level, __out LPBYTE *bufptr ); 

(Reference: )

I tried this:

private string BArrayToString(byte[] myArray) { string retVal = ""; if (myArray == null) retVal = "Null"; else { foreach (byte myByte in myArray) { retVal += myByte.ToString("X2"); } } return retVal; } ... [DllImport("netapi32.dll")] public static extern int NetUserModalsGet( string servername, int level, out byte[] bufptr ); [DllImport("netapi32.dll")] public static extern int NetApiBufferFree( byte[] bufptr ); ... int retVal; byte[] myBuf; retVal = NetUserModalsGet("\\\\" + tbHost.Text, 0, out myBuf); myResults.Text += String.Format("retVal={0}\nBuffer={1}\n", retVal, BArrayToString(myBuf)); retVal = NetApiBufferFree(myBuf); 

I get a return value of 1231 (Network Location cannot be reached) no matter if I use an IP address or a NetBIOS name of a machine that's undoubtedly online, or even my own. On edit: this happens even if I don't put a "\\" in front of the hostname.

I'm doing things wrong, I know, and let's not even get started on how to declare that blasted return buffer (which can have a number of different lengths, ewww).

2 Answers

From pinvoke.net (they also have some sample code on how to use it):

 [DllImport("netapi32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall, SetLastError = true)] static extern uint NetUserModalsGet( string server, int level, out IntPtr BufPtr); 

It would be better to use System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(somestring_param) and System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(byte_array) instead of your own routine BArrayToString.

Hope this helps.