Simplify powershell query - powershell

Question

I am learning powershell, and a looking to query couple of AD groups and determine whether a user is member of AD group.
Part 1 : Query a AD group which has 10 nested AD groups
Part 2: Query user's AD group and pull a list
Part 3: Not posted, but to compare output of Part 1 and Part 2
Searched online and found some tits and bits. I am aware of Active Directory module, but avoid using it, since this script would be executed by user who is non-technical and avoid installing RSAT just for that.
I have Powershell version 2 and Windows 7
Part 1
group1 is the AD group which has 10 nested AD groups.
Write-Host "Fetching information from groups.Please wait.."
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement
$ct = [System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.ContextType]::Domain
$group=[System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.GroupPrincipal]::FindByIdentity ($ct,'group1')
$group1 = $group.GetMembers | Where {$_.StructuralObjectClass -eq "group"} | Select SamAccountName
$group1 = $group1 -replace("=", " ") -replace("{", " ") -replace("#", " ") -replace ("}", " ") -replace("SamAccountname", " ") -replace '\s+', ' '
$ADGroups = foreach ($l in group1) {$l.trim()}
To ensure the AD group information is fetched by program or exit the script
if (($ADgroups | out-string) -like $null) {
Write-Host "Unable to fetch AD groups information" -foreground "red"
Start-sleep 10
break
}
Part 2
Temp location where files can be written
$location = "C:\AD"
$ct = [System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.ContextType]::Domain
$user = [System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.UserPrincipal]::FindByIdentity($ct, $username)
If ($user -like $null) {
Write-host "User does not exist in AD" -foreground "magenta"
start-sleep 10
break
}
Write-Host "Please wait...Looking user group membership..."
$usergroups = $user.GetGroups()
Removing file if exists.
Remove-Item $location\useradgroups.txt
$usergroups | select SamAccountName | Out-File $location\useradgroups.txt -append
$testr = gc $location\useradgroups.txt
if (($testr | out-string) -like $null) {
Write-Host "Unable to fetch user AD groups information" -foreground "red"
Start-sleep 10
Remove-Item $location\useradgroups.txt
break
}
$useradgroups = foreach ($l in $testr ) {$l.trim()}
$useradgroups | Select-String -Pattern "\w" | out-file $location\useradgroups.txt
$useradgroups = gc $location\useradgroups.txt
Question:
Unless I trim the output, cannot compare it. so had to write the script as shown above:
Avoid writting the output to text file
Avoid -replace("=", " ") -replace("{", " ") in Part 1
Simplify the code.
Any suggestion from Powershell gurus would be welcomed. It would help me in learning process

Answer 1

So what you're trying to do is recursively get ADGroupMembers? Sort of like this or this? There is always more than one way to do things. You can use the [ASDI] type accelerator.
$groups = [adsi]'LDAP://CN=GroupName,OU=Groups,OU=Place,DC=Tomorrow,DC=Today'
$group | Get-Member
foreach($group in $groups){
$members = $group.member
foreach($member in $members){
#Is this a group or a user?
#If group Get the Group members
#If a user say the user is part of the group
}
}
Are you trying to format the distinguishedName of a user?
$user = "CN=Huck Finn,OU=Users,OU=Today,OU=Tomorrow,DC=Yesterday,DC=com"
$splits = ($user -split ',')
[PSCustomObject]#{Username=$splits[0].substring(3);OUPath=($splits[1..($splits.Count-1)] | % {$_.substring(3)}) -join '\'}
Hope I helped.

Answer 2

Untested, but can't you use something like this for part 1?
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Get-ADGroupMember "group1" | select sAMAccountName