Authenticate JavaScript apps to Azure services during local development using developer accounts

When you create cloud applications, developers need to debug and test applications on their local workstation. When an application is run on a developer's workstation during local development, it still must authenticate to any Azure services used by the app. This article covers how to use a developer's Azure credentials to authenticate the app to Azure during local development.

For an app to authenticate to Azure during local development using the developer's Azure credentials, the developer must be signed-in to Azure from the Visual Studio Code Azure Tools extension, the Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell. The Azure SDK for JavaScript is able to detect that the developer is signed-in from one of these tools and then obtain the necessary credentials from the credentials cache to authenticate the app to Azure as the signed-in user.

This approach is easiest to set up for a development team since it takes advantage of the developers' existing Azure accounts. However, a developer's account will likely have more permissions than required by the application, therefore exceeding the permissions the app runs with in production. As an alternative, you can create application service principals to use during local development, which can be scoped to have only the access needed by the app.

1 - Create Microsoft Entra group for local development

Since there are almost always multiple developers who work on an application, it's recommended to first create a Microsoft Entra group to encapsulate the roles (permissions) the app needs in local development. This offers the following advantages.

• Every developer is assured to have the same roles assigned since roles are assigned at the group level.
• If a new role is needed for the app, it only needs to be added to the Microsoft Entra group for the app.
• If a new developer joins the team, they simply must be added to the correct Microsoft Entra group to get the correct permissions to work on the app.

If you have an existing Microsoft Entra group for your development team, you can use that group. Otherwise, complete the following steps to create a Microsoft Entra group.

Azure portal

Instructions	Screenshot
Navigate to the Microsoft Entra ID page in the Azure portal by typing Microsoft Entra ID into the search box at the top of the page and then selecting Microsoft Entra ID from under services.
On the Microsoft Entra ID page, select Groups from the left-hand menu.
On the All groups page, select New group.
On the New Group page: Group type → Security. Group name → A name for the security group, typically created from the application name. It's also helpful to include a string like local-dev in the name of the group to indicate the purpose of the group. Group description → A description of the purpose of the group. Select the No members selected link under Members to add members to the group.
On the Add members dialog box: Use the search box to filter the list of user names in the list. Choose one or more users for local development for this app. As you choose an object, the object moves to the Selected items list at the bottom of the dialog. When finished, choose the Select button.
Back on the New group page, select Create to create the group. The group will be created and you will be taken back to the All groups page. It may take up to 30 seconds for the group to appear and you may need to refresh the page due to caching in the Azure portal.

Azure CLI

The az ad group create command is used to create groups in Microsoft Entra ID. The --display-name and --main-nickname parameters are required. The name given to the group should be based on the name of the application. It's also useful to include a phrase like 'local-dev' in the name of the group to indicate the purpose of the group.

az ad group create \
    --display-name MyDisplay \
    --mail-nickname MyDisplay  \
    --description <group-description>

To add members to the group, you'll need the object ID of Azure user. Use the az ad user list to list the available service principals. The --filter parameter command accepts OData style filters and can be used to filter the list on the display name of the user as shown. The --query parameter returns specified columns.

az ad user list \
    --filter "startswith(displayName, 'Bob')" \
    --query "[].{objectId:objectId, displayName:displayName}" \
    --output table

The az ad group member add command can then be used to add members to groups.

az ad group member add \
    --group <group-name> \
    --member-id <object-id>

2 - Assign roles to the Microsoft Entra group

Next, you need to determine what roles (permissions) your app needs on what resources and assign those roles to your app. In this example, the roles are assigned to the Microsoft Entra group created in step 1. Roles can be assigned a role at a resource, resource group, or subscription scope. This example shows how to assign roles at the resource group scope since most applications group all their Azure resources into a single resource group.

Azure portal

Instructions	Screenshot
Locate the resource group for your application by searching for the resource group name using the search box at the top of the Azure portal. Navigate to your resource group by selecting the resource group name under the Resource Groups heading in the dialog box.
On the page for the resource group, select Access control (IAM) from the left-hand menu.
On the Access control (IAM) page: Select the Role assignments tab. Select + Add from the top menu and then Add role assignment from the resulting drop-down menu.
The Add role assignment page lists all of the roles that can be assigned for the resource group. Use the search box to filter the list to a more manageable size. This example shows how to filter for Storage Blob roles. Select the role that you want to assign. Select Next to go to the next screen.
The next Add role assignment page allows you to specify what user to assign the role to. Select User, group, or service principal under Assign access to. Select + Select members under Members A dialog box opens on the right-hand side of the Azure portal.
In the Select members dialog: The Select text box can be used to filter the list of users and groups in your subscription. If needed, type the first few characters of the local development Microsoft Entra group you created for the app. Select the local development Microsoft Entra group associated with your application. Select Select at the bottom of the dialog to continue.
The Microsoft Entra group shows as selected on the Add role assignment screen. Select Review + assign to go to the final page and then Review + assign again to complete the process.

Azure CLI

An application service principal is assigned a role in Azure using the az role assignment create command.

az role assignment create --assignee "{appId}" \
    --scope /subscriptions/"{subscriptionName}" \
    --role "{roleName}" \
    --resource-group "{resourceGroupName}"

To get the role names that a service principal can be assigned to, use the az role definition list command.

az role definition list --query "sort_by([].{roleName:roleName, description:description}, &roleName)" --output table

For example, to allow the application service principal with the appId of 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 read, write, and delete access to Azure Storage blob containers and data to all storage accounts in the msdocs-sdk-auth-example resource group, you would assign the application service principal to the Storage Blob Data Contributor role using the following command.

az role assignment create --assignee "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" \
    --scope /subscriptions/"Storage Blob Data Subscriber" \
    --role "Storage Blob Data Contributor" \
    --resource-group "msdocs-sdk-auth-example"

For information on assigning permissions at the resource or subscription level using the Azure CLI, see the article Assign Azure roles using the Azure CLI.

3 - Sign-in to Azure using VS Code, the Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell

Open a terminal on your developer workstation and sign-in to Azure from Azure PowerShell.

Connect-AzAccount

4 - Implement DefaultAzureCredential in your application

To authenticate Azure SDK client objects to Azure, your application should use the DefaultAzureCredential class from the @azure/identity package. In this scenario, DefaultAzureCredential will sequentially check to see if the developer has signed-in to Azure using the VS Code Azure tools extension, the Azure CLI, or Azure PowerShell. If the developer is signed-in to Azure using any of these tools, then the credentials used to sign into the tool will be used by the app to authenticate to Azure with.

Start by adding the @azure/identity package to your application.

npm install @azure/identity

Next, for any JavaScript code that creates an Azure SDK client object in your app, you'll want to:

1. Import the DefaultAzureCredential class from the @azure/identity module.
2. Create a DefaultAzureCredential object.
3. Pass the DefaultAzureCredential object to the Azure SDK client object constructor.

An example of this is shown in the following code segment.

import { BlobServiceClient } from '@azure/storage-blob';
import { DefaultAzureCredential } from '@azure/identity';

// Acquire a credential object
const tokenCredential = DefaultAzureCredential();

const blobServiceClient = BlobServiceClient(
        `https://${accountName}.blob.core.windows.net`,
        tokenCredential
);

DefaultAzureCredential will automatically detect the authentication mechanism configured for the app and obtain the necessary tokens to authenticate the app to Azure. If an application makes use of more than one SDK client, the same credential object can be used with each SDK client object.