It was great day when I discover WMI in .Net framework,
many thanks for .Net framework J ,
you can find everything you need there ….
The story began when I face an issue required me to
save some information related to the current machine that run my windows
application. Sometimes it’s important to get some information related to the
current machine such as the current IP Address, or the current Hostname …may be
some processor information too …etc.
In my case it was important to get IP Addresses
information to implement some business security on my Windows Application, at
this moment I start searching for different techniques to do that …until I
found the “WMI” …
Hey… Why don’t ask your windows about the information
you need? Yes it’s really like that …or in technical word sends a Query the
windows…!!
WMI stand for “Windows Management Instrumentation”,
below is a definition I read it from MSD …
“ Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. You can write WMI scripts or applications to automate administrative tasks on remote computers but WMI also supplies management data to other parts of the operating system and products, for example System Center Operations Manager, formerly Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), or Windows Remote Management “
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In the below example I will show how it was easy to get
some of IP information from My PC , first of all you need to the reference “system.managment”
to your application since we need to include this reference on our form class
….
Now what’s required is to Query the windows about my Network
Adapter Configuration, since the IP come as a part of “Network Adapter” ….
I assume you will build a windows form with listbox
control to fill it with the required IP information …
We will use “ManagementObjectSearcher”
class
to execute our query in windows, note that “ManagementObjectSearcher”
will
represent the WMI class …below method will execute a query that ask for enabled
IP on the machine , taking in the consideration that the machine was windows
-32.
private void ListNetworkInformation()
{
// Search on all network-adapters (only enabled) :
ManagementObjectSearcher wmiSearch = new ManagementObjectSearcher
("SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WHERE IPEnabled = 'TRUE'");
ManagementObjectCollection mgmCollection = wmiSearch.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject mgmItem in mgmCollection)
{
// Get HostName :
string HostName = mgmItem["DNSHostName"].ToString();
this.listBox1.Items.Add("DNSHostName : " + HostName);
// Get Description :
string Description = mgmItem["Description"].ToString();
this.listBox1.Items.Add("Description : " + Description);
// List IP Addresses :
string[] IPAddrs = (string[])mgmItem["IPAddress"];
foreach (string ipAdd in IPAddrs)
this.listBox1.Items.Add("IP-Address : [ " + ipAdd + " ]");
// IPSubnets :
string[] IPsub = (string[])mgmItem["IPSubnet"];
if (IPsub != null)
foreach (string ipsubnet in IPsub)
this.listBox1.Items.Add("IPSubnet : [ " + ipsubnet + " ]");
// Default IP Gateways
string[] IPgateways = (string[])mgmItem["DefaultIPGateway"];
if (IPgateways != null)
foreach (string defipgateway in IPgateways)
this.listBox1.Items.Add("Default IP Gateway : [ " + defipgateway + " ]");
this.listBox1.Items.Add("==============================================");
}
}
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Calling the above method will get different information
such as: HostName, IP Addresses, IP Subnets & IP-Subnets …etc.
As you see we execute this query in windows management (SELECT * FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration WHERE
IPEnabled = 'TRUE'), which a WMI instance ….looping the
management collection to get the required item.
Hope this sample help in get an idea about WMI …for more information you can check the MSDN ….
