FullTextSqlQuery People search annoyance resolved

Ok, here's an easy one. A lot of us leverage the FullTextSqlQuery class to perform our People searches. Well, one annoyance I find is revealing the proper syntax to return the property values. There's generally no good references since People search varies from farm to farm. So what do you do? Well, you can look through all the Managed Properties in SSP to find them, or you could implement a method that could return the properties you need based on Display name. I prefer the latter since it takes the grunt work out of sifting through hundreds of records.

On to the solution. So by leveraging the UserProfileManager, you can get an instance of the PropertyCollection class and voila! A quick loop through the collection will get you the property you need. Here goes...


static string GetProfileMatchingProperty(string propertyDisplayName)
{
UserProfileManager oSPManager = new UserProfileManager(ServerContext.Default, true);

Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.PropertyCollection profileProperties =
oSPManager.Properties;

foreach (Property profProperty in profileProperties)
{
if (profProperty.DisplayName.ToLower(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) ==
propertyDisplayName.ToLower(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture))
return profProperty.ManagedPropertyName;
}

throw new Exception("Couldn't find it. Sorry.");
}