This sample demonstrates a Desktop daemon application calling a ASP.NET Web API that is secured using Azure Active Directory. This scenario is useful for situations where a headless, or unattended job, or process, needs to run as an application identity, instead of as a user's identity.

1. The .Net TodoListDaemon application uses the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) to obtain a JWT access token from Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). The token is requested using the OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials flow, where the client credential is a password. You could also use a certificate to prove the identity of the app. Client credential with certificate is the object of another sample: active-directory-dotnet-daemon-certificate-credential sample.
2. The access token is used as a bearer token to authenticate the user when calling the TodoListService ASP.NET Web API.

Once the service started, when you start the TodoListDaemon desktop application, it repeatedly:

• adds items to the todo list maintained by the service
• lists the existing items.

No user interaction is involved.

To run this sample, you'll need:

• Visual Studio 2017
• An Internet connection
• An Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant. For more information on how to get an Azure AD tenant, see How to get an Azure AD tenant
• A user account in your Azure AD tenant. This sample will not work with a Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live account). Therefore, if you signed in to the Azure portal with a Microsoft account and have never created a user account in your directory before, you need to do that now.

From your shell or command line:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/active-directory-dotnet-daemon.git

Given that the name of the sample is pretty long, and so are the name of the referenced NuGet pacakges, you might want to clone it in a folder close to the root of your hard drive, to avoid file size limitations on Windows.

There are two projects in this sample. Each needs to be separately registered in your Azure AD tenant. To register these projects, you can:

• either follow the steps Step 2: Register the sample with your Azure Active Directory tenant and Step 3: Configure the sample to use your Azure AD tenant
• or use PowerShell scripts that:
  • automatically creates the Azure AD applications and related objects (passwords, permissions, dependencies) for you
  • modify the Visual Studio projects' configuration files.

If you want to use this automation, read the instructions in App Creation Scripts

As a first step you'll need to:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal using either a work or school account or a personal Microsoft account.
2. If your account gives you access to more than one tenant, select your account in the top right corner, and set your portal session to the desired Azure AD tenant (using Switch Directory).
3. In the left-hand navigation pane, select the Azure Active Directory service, and then select App registrations (Preview).

1. In App registrations (Preview) page, select New registration.
2. When the Register an application page appears, enter your application's registration information:
   • In the Name section, enter a meaningful application name that will be displayed to users of the app, for example todoListService_web_daemon_v1.
   • In the Supported account types section, select Accounts in this organizational directory only ({tenant name}).
   • In the Redirect URI (optional) section, select Web in the combo-box and enter the following redirect URIs.
     • https://localhost:44321/
3. Select Register to create the application.
4. On the app Overview page, find the Application (client) ID value and record it for later. You'll need it to configure the Visual Studio configuration file for this project.
5. In the list of pages for the app, select on Expose an API
   • For Application ID URI, set it to https://<your_tenant_name>/todoListService_web_daemon_v1 and pres Save
   • Select Add a scope
   • Enter the following parameters
     • for Scope name use access_as_user
     • Keep Admins and users for Who can consent
     • in Admin consent display name type Access todoListService_web_daemon_v1 as a user
     • in Admin consent description type Accesses the todoListService_web_daemon_v1 Web API as a user
     • in User consent display name type Access todoListService_web_daemon_v1 as a user
     • in User consent description type Accesses the todoListService_web_daemon_v1 Web API as a user
     • Keep State as Enabled
     • Select Add scope

1. In App registrations (Preview) page, select New registration.

2. When the Register an application page appears, enter your application's registration information:

   • In the Name section, enter a meaningful application name that will be displayed to users of the app, for example todoList_web_daemon_v1.
   • In the Supported account types section, select Accounts in any organizational directory and personal Microsoft accounts (e.g. Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com).
   • In the Redirect URI (optional) section, select Web in the combo-box.

     Even if this is a desktop application, this is a confidential client application hence the Application Type being 'Web', which might seem counter intuitive.

   • For the Redirect URI*, enter https://<your_tenant_name>/todoList_web_daemon_v1, replacing <your_tenant_name> with the name of your Azure AD tenant.

3. Select Register to create the application.

4. On the app Overview page, find the Application (client) ID value and record it for later. You'll need it to configure the Visual Studio configuration file for this project.

5. From the Certificates & secrets page, in the Client secrets section, choose New client secret:

   • Type a key description (of instance app secret),
   • Select a key duration of either In 1 year, In 2 years, or Never Expires.
   • When you press the Add button, the key value will be displayed, copy, and save the value in a safe location.
   • You'll need this key later to configure the project in Visual Studio. This key value will not be displayed again, nor retrievable by any other means, so record it as soon as it is visible from the Azure portal.

6. In the list of pages for the app, select API permissions

   • Click the Add a permission button and then,
   • Ensure that the My APIs tab is selected
   • In the list of APIs, select the API todoListService_web_daemon_v1.
   • In the Delegated permissions section, ensure that the right permissions are checked: Access 'todoListService_web_daemon_v1'. Use the search box if necessary.
   • Select the Add permissions button

7. At this stage permissions are assigned correctly but the client app does not allow interaction. Therefore no consent can be presented via a UI and accepted to use the service app. Click the Grant/revoke admin consent for {tenant} button, and then select Yes when you are asked if you want to grant consent for the requested permissions for all account in the tenant. You need to be an Azure AD tenant admin to do this.

In the steps below, "ClientID" is the same as "Application ID" or "AppId".

Open the solution in Visual Studio to configure the projects

Note: if you used the setup scripts, the changes below will have been applied for you

1. Open the TodoListService\Web.Config file
2. Find the app key ida:Tenant and replace the existing value with your Azure AD tenant name.
3. Find the app key ida:Audience and replace the existing value with the App ID URI you registered earlier for the todoListService_web_daemon_v1 app. For instance use https://<your_tenant_name>/todoListService_web_daemon_v1, where <your_tenant_name> is the name of your Azure AD tenant.

Note: if you used the setup scripts, the changes below will have been applied for you

1. Open the TodoListDaemon\App.Config file
2. Find the app key ida:Tenant and replace the existing value with your Azure AD tenant name.
3. Find the app key ida:ClientId and replace the existing value with the application ID (clientId) of the todoList_web_daemon_v1 application copied from the Azure portal.
4. Find the app key ida:AppKey and replace the existing value with the key you saved during the creation of the todoList_web_daemon_v1 app, in the Azure portal.
5. Find the app key todo:TodoListResourceId and replace the existing value with the App ID URI you registered earlier for the todoListService_web_daemon_v1 app. For instance use https://<your_tenant_name>/todoListService_web_daemon_v1, where <your_tenant_name> is the name of your Azure AD tenant.
6. Find the app key todo:TodoListBaseAddress and replace the existing value with the base address of the todoListService_web_daemon_v1 project (by default https://localhost:44321/).

NOTE: The TodoListService's ida:Audience and TodoListDaemon's todo:TodoListResourceId app key values must not only match the App ID URI you configured, but they must also match each other exactly. This mach includes casing. Otherwise calls to the TodoListService /api/todolist endpoint will fail with "Error: unauthorized".

Clean the solution, rebuild the solution, and run it. You might want to go into the solution properties and set both projects as startup projects, with the service project starting first.

See the scenario section above to understand how to run the sample

This project has one WebApp / Web API projects. To deploy them to Azure Web Sites, you'll need, for each one, to:

• create an Azure Web Site
• publish the Web App / Web APIs to the web site, and
• update its client(s) to call the web site instead of IIS Express.

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Click Create a resource in the top left-hand corner, select Web + Mobile --> Web App, select the hosting plan and region, and give your web site a name, for example, TodoListService-contoso.azurewebsites.net. Click Create Web Site.
3. Once the web site is created, click on it to manage it. For this set of steps, download the publish profile by clicking Get publish profile and save it. Other deployment mechanisms, such as from source control, can also be used.
4. Switch to Visual Studio and go to the TodoListService project. Right click on the project in the Solution Explorer and select Publish. Click Import Profile on the bottom bar, and import the publish profile that you downloaded earlier.
5. Click on Settings and in the Connection tab, update the Destination URL so that it is https, for example https://TodoListService-contoso.azurewebsites.net. Click Next.
6. On the Settings tab, make sure Enable Organizational Authentication is NOT selected. Click Save. Click on Publish on the main screen.
7. Visual Studio will publish the project and automatically open a browser to the URL of the project. If you see the default web page of the project, the publication was successful.

1. Navigate to the Azure portal.
2. On the top bar, click on your account and under the Directory list, choose the Active Directory tenant containing the TodoListService application.
3. On the applications tab, select the TodoListService application.
4. From the Settings -> Reply URLs menu, update the Sign-On URL, and Reply URL fields to the address of your service, for example https://TodoListService-contoso.azurewebsites.net. Save the configuration.

1. In Visual Studio, go to the TodoListDaemon project.
2. Open TodoListDaemon\App.Config. Only one change is needed - update the todo:TodoListBaseAddress key value to be the address of the website you published, for example, https://TodoListService-contoso.azurewebsites.net.
3. Run the client! If you are trying multiple different client types (for example, .Net, Windows Store, Android, iOS) you can have them all call this one published web API.

NOTE: Remember, the To Do list is stored in memory in this TodoListService sample. Azure Web Sites will spin down your web site if it is inactive, and your To Do list will get emptied. Also, if you increase the instance count of the web site, requests will be distributed among the instances. To Do will, therefore, not be the same on each instance.

The code acquiring a token is located entirely in the TodoListDaemon\Program.cs file. The Authentication context is created (line 68)

authContext = new AuthenticationContext(authority);

Then a ClientCredential is instantiated (line 69), from the TodoListDaemon application's Client ID and the application secret (appKey).

clientCredential = new ClientCredential(clientId, appKey);

This instance of ClientCredential is used in the PostTodo() and GetTodo() methods as an argument to AcquireTokenAsync to get a token for the Web API (line 96 and 162)

result = await authContext.AcquireTokenAsync(todoListResourceId, clientCredential);

This token is then used as a bearer token to call the Web API (line 127 and 193)

httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", result.AccessToken)

First, in Visual Studio create an empty solution to host the projects. Then, follow the following steps to create each project.

1. In the solution, create a new ASP.Net MVC web API project called TodoListService and while creating the project:

   • Click the Change Authentication button,

   • Select Organizational Accounts, Cloud - Single Organization,

   • Enter the name of your Azure AD tenant,

   • and set the Access Level to Single Sign On. You will be prompted to sign in to your Azure AD tenant.

     NOTE: You must sign in with a user that is in the tenant; you cannot, during this step, sign in with a Microsoft account.

2. In the folder, add a new class called TodoItem.cs. Copy the implementation of TodoItem from this sample into the class.

3. Add a new, empty, Web API 2 controller called TodoListController.

4. Copy the implementation of the TodoListController from this sample into the controller. Don't forget to add the [Authorize] attribute to the class.

5. In TodoListController resolving missing references by adding using statements for System.Collections.Concurrent, TodoListService.Models, System.Security.Claims.

1. In the solution, create a new Windows --> Console Application called TodoListDaemon.
2. Add the (stable) Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) NuGet, Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory, version 1.0.3 (or higher) to the project.
3. Add assembly references to System.Net.Http, System.Web.Extensions, and System.Configuration.
4. Add a new class to the project called TodoItem.cs. Copy the code from the sample project file of the same name into this class, completely replacing the code in the new file.
5. Copy the code from Program.cs in the sample project into the file of the same name in the new project, completely replacing the code in the new file.
6. In app.config create keys for ida:AADInstance, ida:Tenant, ida:ClientId, ida:AppKey, todo:TodoListResourceId, and todo:TodoListBaseAddress and set them accordingly. For the global Azure cloud, the value of ida:AADInstance is https://login.windows.net/{0}.

Finally, in the properties of the solution itself, set both projects as startup projects.

Use Stack Overflow to get support from the community. Ask your questions on Stack Overflow first and browse existing issues to see if someone has asked your question before. Make sure that your questions or comments are tagged with [adal msal dotnet].

If you find a bug in the sample, please raise the issue on GitHub Issues.

To provide a recommendation, visit the following User Voice page.

If you'd like to contribute to this sample, see CONTRIBUTING.MD.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

For more information, see ADAL.NET's conceptual documentation:

Provide links to the flows from the conceptual documentation and remove some that do not apply, like either keep ADAL or MSAL related links depending on the sample for instance:

• Microsoft identity platform (Azure Active Directory for developers)
• Quickstart: Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform (Preview)
• Quickstart: Configure a client application to access web APIs (Preview)
• Client credential flows
• Using the acquired token to call a protected Web API- Client credential flows
• Using the acquired token to call a protected Web API
• ADAL.NET's conceptual documentation
• Recommended pattern to acquire a token
• Acquiring tokens interactively in public client applications
• National Clouds

For more information about how OAuth 2.0 protocols work in this scenario and other scenarios, see Authentication Scenarios for Azure AD.