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Quickstart: Acquire a token and call Microsoft Graph API from a Python console app using app's identity

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Quickstart: Acquire a token and call Microsoft Graph from a Python daemon app

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In this quickstart, you download and run a code sample that demonstrates how a Python application can get an access token using the app's identity to call the Microsoft Graph API and display a list of users in the directory. The code sample demonstrates how an unattended job or Windows service can run with an application identity, instead of a user's identity.

Prerequisites

To run this sample, you need:

Download and configure the quickstart app

Step 1: Configure your application in Azure portal

For the code sample in this quickstart to work, create a client secret and add Graph API's User.Read.All application permission.

Make these changes for me

Already configured Your application is configured with these attributes.

Step 2: Download the Python project

Download the code sample

Note

Enter_the_Supported_Account_Info_Here

If you try to run the application at this point, you'll receive HTTP 403 - Forbidden error: Insufficient privileges to complete the operation. This error happens because any app-only permission requires Admin consent: a Global Administrator of your directory must give consent to your application. Select one of the options below depending on your role:

Global tenant administrator

If you are a Global Administrator, go to API Permissions page select Grant admin consent for Enter_the_Tenant_Name_Here.

Standard user

If you're a standard user of your tenant, ask a Global Administrator to grant admin consent for your application. To do this, give the following URL to your administrator:

https://login.microsoftonline.com/Enter_the_Tenant_Id_Here/adminconsent?client_id=Enter_the_Application_Id_Here

Step 4: Run the application

You'll need to install the dependencies of this sample once.

pip install -r requirements.txt

Then, run the application via command prompt or console:

python confidential_client_secret_sample.py parameters.json

You should see on the console output some Json fragment representing a list of users in your Microsoft Entra directory.

Important

This quickstart application uses a client secret to identify itself as confidential client. Because the client secret is added as a plain-text to your project files, for security reasons, it is recommended that you use a certificate instead of a client secret before considering the application as production application. For more information on how to use a certificate, see these instructions in the same GitHub repository for this sample, but in the second folder 2-Call-MsGraph-WithCertificate.

More information

MSAL Python

MSAL Python is the library used to sign in users and request tokens used to access an API protected by Microsoft identity platform. As described, this quickstart requests tokens by using the application own identity instead of delegated permissions. The authentication flow used in this case is known as client credentials oauth flow. For more information on how to use MSAL Python with daemon apps, see this article.

You can install MSAL Python by running the following pip command.

pip install msal

MSAL initialization

You can add the reference for MSAL by adding the following code:

import msal

Then, initialize MSAL using the following code:

app = msal.ConfidentialClientApplication(
    config["client_id"], authority=config["authority"],
    client_credential=config["secret"])
Where: Description
config["secret"] Is the client secret created for the application in Azure portal.
config["client_id"] Is the Application (client) ID for the application registered in the Azure portal. You can find this value in the app's Overview page in the Azure portal.
config["authority"] The STS endpoint for user to authenticate. Usually https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant} for public cloud, where {tenant} is the name of your tenant or your tenant Id.

For more information, please see the reference documentation for ConfidentialClientApplication.

Requesting tokens

To request a token using app's identity, use AcquireTokenForClient method:

result = None
result = app.acquire_token_silent(config["scope"], account=None)

if not result:
    logging.info("No suitable token exists in cache. Let's get a new one from Azure AD.")
    result = app.acquire_token_for_client(scopes=config["scope"])
Where: Description
config["scope"] Contains the scopes requested. For confidential clients, this should use the format similar to {Application ID URI}/.default to indicate that the scopes being requested are the ones statically defined in the app object set in the Azure portal (for Microsoft Graph, {Application ID URI} points to https://graph.microsoft.com). For custom web APIs, {Application ID URI} is defined under the Expose an API section in App registrations in the Azure portal.

For more information, please see the reference documentation for AcquireTokenForClient.

Help and support

If you need help, want to report an issue, or want to learn about your support options, see Help and support for developers.

Next steps

To learn more about daemon applications, see the scenario landing page.

Daemon application that calls web APIs