Sign in users in sample Android (Kotlin) app

This guide demonstrates how to configure a sample Android mobile application to sign in users.

In this article, you do the following tasks:

  • Register an application in the Microsoft Entra admin center.
  • Add a platform redirect URL.
  • Enable public client flows.
  • Update the Android configuration code sample file to use your own Microsoft Entra External ID for customer tenant details.
  • Run and test the sample Android mobile application.

Prerequisites

Register an application

To enable your application to sign in users with Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Entra External ID must be made aware of the application you create. The app registration establishes a trust relationship between the app and Microsoft Entra. When you register an application, External ID generates a unique identifier known as an Application (client) ID, a value used to identify your app when creating authentication requests.

The following steps show you how to register your app in the Microsoft Entra admin center:

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least an Application Developer.

  2. If you have access to multiple tenants, use the Settings icon in the top menu to switch to your external tenant from the Directories + subscriptions menu.

  3. Browse to Identity >Applications > App registrations.

  4. Select + New registration.

  5. In the Register an application page that appears;

    1. Enter a meaningful application Name that is displayed to users of the app, for example ciam-client-app.
    2. Under Supported account types, select Accounts in this organizational directory only.
  6. Select Register.

  7. The application's Overview pane displays upon successful registration. Record the Application (client) ID to be used in your application source code.

Add a platform redirect URL

To specify your app type to your app registration, follow these steps:

  1. Under Manage, select Authentication.
  2. On the Platform configurations page, select Add a platform, and then select Android option.
  3. Enter your project's Package Name. If you downloaded the sample code, this value is com.azuresamples.msaldelegatedandroidkotlinsampleapp.
  4. In the Signature hash section of the Configure your Android app pane, select Generating a development Signature Hash. This will change for each development environment. Copy and run the KeyTool command for your operating system in your Terminal.
  5. Enter the Signature hash generated by KeyTool.
  6. Select Configure.
  7. Copy the MSAL Configuration from the Android configuration pane and save it for later app configuration.
  8. Select Done.

Enable public client flow

To identify your app as a public client, follow these steps:

  1. Under Manage, select Authentication.

  2. Under Advanced settings, for Allow public client flows, select Yes.

  3. Select Save to save your changes.

  1. From the App registrations page, select the application that you created (such as ciam-client-app) to open its Overview page.

  2. Under Manage, select API permissions. From the Configured permissions list, your application has been assigned the User.Read permission. However, since the tenant is an external tenant, the consumer users themselves can't consent to this permission. You as the admin must consent to this permission on behalf of all the users in the tenant:

    1. Select Grant admin consent for <your tenant name>, then select Yes.
    2. Select Refresh, then verify that Granted for <your tenant name> appears under Status for both scopes.

Clone sample Android mobile application

To obtain the sample application, you can either clone it from GitHub or download it as a .zip file.

  • To clone the sample, open a command prompt and navigate to where you wish to create the project, and enter the following command:

    git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ms-identity-ciam-browser-delegated-android-sample
    

Configure the sample Android mobile application

To enable authentication and access to Microsoft Graph resources, configure the sample by following these steps:

  1. In Android Studio, open the project that you cloned.

  2. Open /app/src/main/res/raw/auth_config_ciam.json file.

  3. Find the placeholder:

    • Enter_the_Application_Id_Here and replace it with the Application (client) ID of the app you registered earlier.
    • Enter_the_Redirect_Uri_Here and replace it with the value of redirect_uri in the Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) configuration file you downloaded earlier when you added the platform redirect URL.
    • Enter_the_Tenant_Subdomain_Here and replace it with the Directory (tenant) subdomain. For example, if your tenant primary domain is contoso.onmicrosoft.com, use contoso. If you don't know your tenant subdomain, learn how to read your tenant details.
  4. Open /app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml file.

  5. Find the placeholder:

    • ENTER_YOUR_SIGNATURE_HASH_HERE and replace it with the Signature Hash that you generated earlier when you added the platform redirect URL.
  6. Open /app/src/main/java/com/azuresamples/msaldelegatedandroidkotlinsampleapp/MainActivity.kt file.

  7. Find property named scopes and set the scopes recorded in Grant admin consent. If you haven't recorded any scopes, you can leave this scope list empty.

    private const val scopes = "" // Developers should set the respective scopes of their Microsoft Graph resources here. For example, private const val scopes = "api://{clientId}/{ToDoList.Read} api://{clientId}/{ToDoList.ReadWrite}"
    

You've configured the app and it's ready to run.

Run and test the sample Android mobile application

To build and run your app, follow these steps:

  1. In the toolbar, select your app from the run configurations menu.

  2. In the target device menu, select the device that you want to run your app on.

    If you don't have any devices configured, you need to either create an Android Virtual Device to use the Android Emulator or connect a physical Android device.

  3. Select the Run button.

  4. Select Acquire Token Interactively to request an access token.

  5. If you select API - Perform GET to call a protected ASP.NET Core web API, you will get an error.

For more information about calling a protected web API, see our next steps

Next steps