End-user authentication with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 using .NET SDK

  • Article

In this article, you learn about how to use the .NET SDK to do end-user authentication with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1. For service-to-service authentication with Data Lake Storage Gen1 using .NET SDK, see Service-to-service authentication with Data Lake Storage Gen1 using .NET SDK.

Prerequisites

Create a .NET application

  1. In Visual Studio, select the File menu, New, and then Project.

  2. Choose Console App (.NET Framework), and then select Next.

  3. In Project name, enter CreateADLApplication, and then select Create.

  4. Add the NuGet packages to your project.

    1. Right-click the project name in the Solution Explorer and click Manage NuGet Packages.

    2. In the NuGet Package Manager tab, make sure that Package source is set to nuget.org and that Include prerelease check box is selected.

    3. Search for and install the following NuGet packages:

      • Microsoft.Azure.Management.DataLake.Store - This tutorial uses v2.1.3-preview.

      • Microsoft.Rest.ClientRuntime.Azure.Authentication - This tutorial uses v2.2.12.

        Add a NuGet source

    4. Close the NuGet Package Manager.

  5. Open Program.cs

  6. Replace the using statements with the following lines:

    using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using Microsoft.Rest;
using Microsoft.Rest.Azure.Authentication;
using Microsoft.Azure.Management.DataLake.Store;
using Microsoft.Azure.Management.DataLake.Store.Models;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory;

End-user authentication

Add this snippet in your .NET client application. Replace the placeholder values with the values retrieved from a Microsoft Entra native application (listed as prerequisite). This snippet lets you authenticate your application interactively with Data Lake Storage Gen1, which means you are prompted to enter your Azure credentials.

For ease of use, the following snippet uses default values for client ID and redirect URI that are valid for any Azure subscription. In the following snippet, you only need to provide the value for your tenant ID. You can retrieve the Tenant ID using the instructions provided at Get the tenant ID.

  • Replace the Main() function with the following code:

    private static void Main(string[] args)
{
    //User login via interactive popup
    string TENANT = "<AAD-directory-domain>";
    string CLIENTID = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx";
    System.Uri ARM_TOKEN_AUDIENCE = new System.Uri(@"https://management.core.windows.net/");
    System.Uri ADL_TOKEN_AUDIENCE = new System.Uri(@"https://datalake.azure.net/");
    string MY_DOCUMENTS = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments);
    string TOKEN_CACHE_PATH = System.IO.Path.Combine(MY_DOCUMENTS, "my.tokencache");
    var tokenCache = GetTokenCache(TOKEN_CACHE_PATH);
    var armCreds = GetCreds_User_Popup(TENANT, ARM_TOKEN_AUDIENCE, CLIENTID, tokenCache);
    var adlCreds = GetCreds_User_Popup(TENANT, ADL_TOKEN_AUDIENCE, CLIENTID, tokenCache);
}

A couple of things to know about the preceding snippet:

  • The preceding snippet uses a helper functions GetTokenCache and GetCreds_User_Popup. The code for these helper functions is available here on GitHub.
  • To help you complete the tutorial faster, the snippet uses a native application client ID that is available by default for all Azure subscriptions. So, you can use this snippet as-is in your application.
  • However, if you do want to use your own Microsoft Entra domain and application client ID, you must create a Microsoft Entra native application and then use the Microsoft Entra tenant ID, client ID, and redirect URI for the application you created. See Create an Active Directory Application for end-user authentication with Data Lake Storage Gen1 for instructions.

Next steps

In this article, you learned how to use end-user authentication to authenticate with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 using .NET SDK. You can now look at the following articles that talk about how to use the .NET SDK to work with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1.