App roles that are assigned to service principals are also known as application permissions. Application permissions can be granted directly with app role assignments, or through a consent experience.
To grant an app role assignment to a client service principal, you need three identifiers:
principalId: The id of the client service principal to which you are assigning the app role.
resourceId: The id of the resource servicePrincipal (the API) which has defined the app role (the application permission).
appRoleId: The id of the appRole (defined on the resource service principal) to assign to the client service principal.
One of the following permissions is required to call this API. To learn more, including how to choose permissions, see Permissions.
Permission type
Permissions (from least to most privileged)
Delegated (work or school account)
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Application.Read.All, AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Directory.Read.All
Delegated (personal Microsoft account)
Not supported.
Application
AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Application.Read.All, AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All and Directory.Read.All
For delegated scenarios, the calling user needs at least one of the following Microsoft Entra roles.
Directory Synchronization Accounts
Directory Writer
Hybrid Identity Administrator
Identity Governance Administrator
Privileged Role Administrator
User Administrator
Application Administrator
Cloud Application Administrator
HTTP request
You can address the service principal using either its id or appId. id and appId are referred to as the Object ID and Application (Client) ID, respectively, in app registrations in the Microsoft Entra admin center.
POST /servicePrincipals/{id}/appRoleAssignments
POST /servicePrincipals(appId='{appId}')/appRoleAssignments
// Code snippets are only available for the latest version. Current version is 5.x
// Dependencies
using Microsoft.Graph.Models;
var requestBody = new AppRoleAssignment
{
PrincipalId = Guid.Parse("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e"),
ResourceId = Guid.Parse("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5"),
AppRoleId = Guid.Parse("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"),
};
// To initialize your graphClient, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/sdks/create-client?from=snippets&tabs=csharp
var result = await graphClient.ServicePrincipals["{servicePrincipal-id}"].AppRoleAssignments.PostAsync(requestBody);
// THE CLI IS IN PREVIEW. NON-PRODUCTION USE ONLY
mgc service-principals app-role-assignments create --service-principal-id {servicePrincipal-id} --body '{\
"principalId": "9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e",\
"resourceId": "8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5",\
"appRoleId": "498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"\
}\
'
<?php
// THIS SNIPPET IS A PREVIEW VERSION OF THE SDK. NON-PRODUCTION USE ONLY
$graphServiceClient = new GraphServiceClient($tokenRequestContext, $scopes);
$requestBody = new AppRoleAssignment();
$requestBody->setPrincipalId('9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e');
$requestBody->setResourceId('8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5');
$requestBody->setAppRoleId('498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6');
$result = $graphServiceClient->servicePrincipals()->byServicePrincipalId('servicePrincipal-id')->appRoleAssignments()->post($requestBody)->wait();
# THE PYTHON SDK IS IN PREVIEW. FOR NON-PRODUCTION USE ONLY
graph_client = GraphServiceClient(credentials, scopes)
request_body = AppRoleAssignment(
principal_id = UUID("9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e"),
resource_id = UUID("8fce32da-1246-437b-99cd-76d1d4677bd5"),
app_role_id = UUID("498476ce-e0fe-48b0-b801-37ba7e2685c6"),
)
result = await graph_client.service_principals.by_service_principal_id('servicePrincipal-id').app_role_assignments.post(request_body)
In this example, note that the value used as the service principal id in the request URL (9028d19c-26a9-4809-8e3f-20ff73e2d75e) is the same as the principalId property in the body. The resourceId value is the id of the resource service principal (the API).
Response
Here is an example of the response.
Note: The response object shown here might be shortened for readability.