How to copy People and group from one site to another

Question

I need to copy People and group from one sharepoint site to another. I dont want to backup the entire site.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks, Lav

Answer 1

I just did something very similar to this, should be plenty of pointers. Code below. You are welcome.

My code is running as a timer job and synchronizes user groups across several site collection sharing a managed path in a web application. The code uses the following variables: _webApplicationToSynch is the absolute url to the web application. _managedPaths is the csv of managed paths to synchronize. _groupsToSynch is the csv of user groups to synchronize.

using (var rootSiteCol = new SPSite(_webApplicationToSynch))
using (var rootWeb = rootSiteCol.OpenWeb(rootSiteCol.RootWeb.ID))
{
    var rootGroups = new List<SPGroup>();
    foreach (string groupName in _groupsToSynch)
    {
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(groupName))
        {
            var group = rootWeb.SiteGroups[groupName];
            if (group != null && group.Users.Count > 0) rootGroups.Add(group);
        }
    }
    for (int siteCounter = 0; siteCounter < rootSiteCol.WebApplication.Sites.Count; siteCounter++)
    {
        using (var leafSiteCol = rootSiteCol.WebApplication.Sites[siteCounter])
        using (var leafWeb = leafSiteCol.OpenWeb(leafSiteCol.RootWeb.ID))
        {
            //Check if the sitecollection matches one or more valid managed paths
            var manPathMatches =
                _managedPaths.Where<string>(
                    manPath => leafSiteCol.Url.StartsWith(_webApplicationToSynch.TrimEnd('/') + "/" + manPath + "/"));

            if (manPathMatches.Count() > 0) continue; //Do not synch if man.path. is not "valid", i.e. inputted

            //Synch groups
            foreach (SPGroup rootGroup in rootGroups)
            {
                var leafGroup = leafWeb.SiteGroups[rootGroup.Name];
                foreach (SPUser rootGroupUser in rootGroup.Users)
                {
                    //A user exists in the rootgroup, but not in the leafgroup. Add to leafgroup.
                    if (leafGroup.Users.GetByEmail(rootGroupUser.Email) == null)
                    {
                        leafWeb.EnsureUser(rootGroupUser.LoginName);
                        leafGroup.AddUser(rootGroupUser);
                    }
                }
                //can't directly remove users because we're modifying the collection we're iterating over
                var usersToRemove = new List<SPUser>(); 
                foreach (SPUser leafGroupUser in leafGroup.Users)
                {
                    //A user exists in the leafgroup, but not in the rootgroup. Remove from leafgroup.
                    if (rootGroup.Users.GetByEmail(leafGroupUser.Email) == null)
                    {
                        usersToRemove.Add(leafGroupUser);
                    }
                }
                //Finally remove all "dead" users
                foreach (SPUser ghost in usersToRemove)
                {
                    leafGroup.RemoveUser(ghost);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    rootWeb.Update();
}