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Quickstart: Protect an ASP.NET Core web API with the Microsoft identity platform

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Quickstart:Protect an ASP.NET Core web API

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Quickstart: Protect an ASP.NET Core web API with the Microsoft identity platform

In this quickstart, you download an ASP.NET Core web API code sample and review the way it restricts resource access to authorized accounts only. The sample supports authorization of personal Microsoft accounts and accounts in any Microsoft Entra organization.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Register the application

First, register the web API in your Microsoft Entra tenant and add a scope by following these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least an Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > App registrations.
  3. Select New registration.
  4. For Name, enter a name for your application. For example, enter AspNetCoreWebApi-Quickstart. Users of your app will see this name, and you can change it later.
  5. Select Register.
  6. Under Manage, select Expose an API > Add a scope. For Application ID URI, accept the default by selecting Save and continue, and then enter the following details:
    • Scope name: access_as_user
    • Who can consent?: Admins and users
    • Admin consent display name: Access AspNetCoreWebApi-Quickstart
    • Admin consent description: Allows the app to access AspNetCoreWebApi-Quickstart as the signed-in user.
    • User consent display name: Access AspNetCoreWebApi-Quickstart
    • User consent description: Allow the application to access AspNetCoreWebApi-Quickstart on your behalf.
    • State: Enabled
  7. Select Add scope to complete the scope addition.

Step 2: Download the ASP.NET Core project

Download the ASP.NET Core solution from GitHub.

Tip

To avoid errors caused by path length limitations in Windows, we recommend extracting the archive or cloning the repository into a directory near the root of your drive.

Step 3: Configure the ASP.NET Core project

In this step, configure the sample code to work with the app registration that you created earlier.

  1. Extract the .zip archive into a folder near the root of your drive. For example, extract into C:\Azure-Samples.

    We recommend extracting the archive into a directory near the root of your drive to avoid errors caused by path length limitations on Windows.

  2. Open the solution in the webapi folder in your code editor.

  3. Open the appsettings.json file and modify the following code:

    "ClientId": "Enter_the_Application_Id_here",
"TenantId": "Enter_the_Tenant_Info_Here"
    • Replace Enter_the_Application_Id_here with the application (client) ID of the application that you registered. You can find the application (client) ID on the app's Overview page.
    • Replace Enter_the_Tenant_Info_Here with one of the following:
      • If your application supports Accounts in this organizational directory only, replace this value with the directory (tenant) ID (a GUID) or tenant name (for example, contoso.onmicrosoft.com). You can find the directory (tenant) ID on the app's Overview page.
      • If your application supports Accounts in any organizational directory, replace this value with organizations.
      • If your application supports All Microsoft account users, leave this value as common.

For this quickstart, don't change any other values in the appsettings.json file.

How the sample works

Startup class

The Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication middleware uses a Startup class that's executed when the hosting process starts. In its ConfigureServices method, the AddMicrosoftIdentityWebApi extension method provided by Microsoft.Identity.Web is called.

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddAuthentication(JwtBearerDefaults.AuthenticationScheme)
                .AddMicrosoftIdentityWebApi(Configuration, "AzureAd");
    }

The AddAuthentication() method configures the service to add JwtBearer-based authentication.

The line that contains .AddMicrosoftIdentityWebApi adds the Microsoft identity platform authorization to your web API. It's then configured to validate access tokens issued by the Microsoft identity platform based on the information in the AzureAD section of the appsettings.json configuration file:

appsettings.json key Description
ClientId Application (client) ID of the application registered.
Instance Security token service (STS) endpoint for the user to authenticate. This value is typically https://login.microsoftonline.com/, indicating the Azure public cloud.
TenantId Name of your tenant or its tenant ID (a GUID), or common to sign in users with work or school accounts or Microsoft personal accounts.

The Configure() method contains two important methods, app.UseAuthentication() and app.UseAuthorization(), that enable their named functionality:

// The runtime calls this method. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
{
    // more code
    app.UseAuthentication();
    app.UseAuthorization();
    // more code
}

Protecting a controller, a controller's method, or a Razor page

You can protect a controller or controller methods by using the [Authorize] attribute. This attribute restricts access to the controller or methods by allowing only authenticated users. An authentication challenge can be started to access the controller if the user isn't authenticated.

namespace webapi.Controllers
{
    [Authorize]
    [ApiController]
    [Route("[controller]")]
    public class WeatherForecastController : ControllerBase

Validation of scope in the controller

The code in the API verifies that the required scopes are in the token by using HttpContext.VerifyUserHasAnyAcceptedScope> (scopeRequiredByApi);:

namespace webapi.Controllers
{
    [Authorize]
    [ApiController]
    [Route("[controller]")]
    public class WeatherForecastController : ControllerBase
    {
        // The web API will only accept tokens 1) for users, and 2) having the "access_as_user" scope for this API
        static readonly string[] scopeRequiredByApi = new string[] { "access_as_user" };

        [HttpGet]
        public IEnumerable<WeatherForecast> Get()
        {
            HttpContext.VerifyUserHasAnyAcceptedScope(scopeRequiredByApi);

            // some code here
        }
    }
}

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

The GitHub repository that contains this ASP.NET Core web API code sample includes instructions and more code samples that show you how to:

  • Add authentication to a new ASP.NET Core web API.
  • Call the web API from a desktop application.
  • Call downstream APIs like Microsoft Graph and other Microsoft APIs.

ASP.NET Core web API tutorials on GitHub