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Use the Microsoft Graph Toolkit with Electron

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  • 5 minutes to read

This article describes the step-by-step process of using the Microsoft Graph Toolkit to create an Electron app and connect it to Microsoft 365. After completing the steps, you'll have a Electron app that shows the upcoming appointments of the currently signed in user from Microsoft 365.

Create an Electron app

Create a new Electron app by cloning the electron-quick-start-typescript repository. This will create a new Electron app using TypeScript, which will help you write more robust code and avoid runtime errors.

git clone https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start-typescript

Change the working directory to the newly created app and install all dependencies.

cd electron-quick-start-typescript
npm install

Install the '@microsoft/mgt-components' package that contains all the Microsoft Graph-connected web components.

npm i @microsoft/mgt-components

Install the @microsoft/mgt-electron-provider and @microsoft/mgt-element npm packages as well. These will allow you to provide authentication for your app using MSAL and use the Microsoft Graph Toolkit components.

npm i @microsoft/mgt-element @microsoft/mgt-electron-provider

Confirm that you can run the app.

npm start

Create an app/client ID

Add new application registration in Azure AD to get a client ID

To create an application in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), you need to add a new application registration, and then configure an app name and redirect URI.

To create the app in Azure AD:

  1. Go to the Azure portal.
  2. From the menu, select Azure Active Directory.
  3. From the Azure Active Directory menu, select App registrations.
  4. From the top menu, select the New registration button.
  5. Enter the name for your app; for example, My Electron-App.
  6. For the type of supported account types, select Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Azure AD directory - Multitenant) and personal Microsoft accounts (e.g. Skype, Xbox).
  7. In the Redirect URI field, in the dropdown, select Public client/native (mobile & desktop), and in the URL field, enter msal://redirect.
  8. Confirm changes by selecting the Register button.
  9. Go to your application registration.
  10. Verify that you are on the Overview page.
  11. From the Essentials section, copy the value of the Application (client) ID property.

Configure the Microsoft Graph Toolkit authentication provider

Initializing ElectronProvider in your renderer process

The ElectronProvider is responsible for communicating with ElectronAuthenticator (in the main process) to request access tokens and receive information regarding signed in state that is required for the mgt components to work.

To initialize the ElectronProvider, add the following code to the src/renderer.ts file.

import {Providers} from '@microsoft/mgt-element';
import {ElectronProvider} from '@microsoft/mgt-electron-provider/dist/Provider';
// import the mgt components so we can use them in our html
import '@microsoft/mgt-components';

// initialize the auth provider globally
Providers.globalProvider = new ElectronProvider();

Initializing ElectronAuthenticator in your main process

The ElectronAuthenticator is responsible for setting up the configuration variables for MSAL authentication, acquiring access tokens, and communicating with the ElectronProvider. Initialize the ElectronAuthenticator in the main process and set up the configuration variables such as client ID and required scopes.

First, open src/main.ts and import ElectronAuthenticator and MsalElectronConfig from @microsoft/mgt-electron-provider at the top of the page.

import { ElectronAuthenticator, MsalElectronConfig } from '@microsoft/mgt-electron-provider/dist/Authenticator';

Next, add these lines of code in the createWindow() function to initialize the ElectronAuthenticator, right after where mainWindow is declared. Replace <your_client_id> with the client ID from your app registration.

const config: MsalElectronConfig = {
  clientId: '<your_client_id>',
  mainWindow: mainWindow, //This is the BrowserWindow instance that requires authentication
  scopes: [
    'user.read',
        'user.read',
        'people.read',
        'user.readbasic.all',
        'contacts.read',
        'presence.read.all',
        'presence.read',
        'user.read.all',
        'calendars.read'
  ],
};
ElectronAuthenticator.initialize(config);

Set nodeIntegration to true

In main.ts, where the new instance of BrowserWindow is created, make sure that you set nodeIntegration to true under webPreferences. If you skip this step, you might run into a Uncaught ReferenceError: require is not defined error. To keep this simple, remove any preloading scripts.

const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
  height: 600,
  webPreferences: {
    nodeIntegration: true //Set this to true
  },
  width: 800
});

Add components to your HTML page

Add some content to your app. You can now use the Microsoft Graph toolkit components in your index.html page and show the user's agenda. Replace the content of the index.html page with the following.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
 <head>
   <meta charset="UTF-8" />
   <title>Sample Electron-MGT App</title>
 </head>
 <body>
   <mgt-login></mgt-login>
   <mgt-agenda group-by-day></mgt-agenda>
   <script type="module" src="./dist/renderer.js"></script>
 </body>
</html>

Note: Remove any Content-Security-Policy response headers or meta tags if you are copying this onto an existing file.

Bundle your app using webpack

Before you can run the app, you need to bundle your code to ensure that all your modular dependencies are included in the final payload. If you are already bundling your app code, you can skip this step.

Install webpack

npm install webpack webpack-cli ts-loader --save-dev

webpack.config.js

Create a new webpack.config.js file in the root folder of your project, and paste the following configuration.

const path = require('path');
module.exports = [
 {
   mode: 'development',
   entry: './src/renderer.ts',
   target: 'electron-renderer',
   module: {
     rules: [
       {
         test: /\.ts$/,
         include: [/src/],
         use: [{ loader: 'ts-loader' }]
       }
     ]
   },
   output: {
     path: __dirname + '/dist',
     filename: 'renderer.js'
   },
   resolve: {
     extensions: ['.ts', '.js'],
     modules: ['node_modules', path.resolve(__dirname + 'src')]
   }
 },
 {
   mode: 'development',
   entry: './src/main.ts',
   target: 'electron-main',
   module: {
     rules: [
       {
         test: /\.ts$/,
         include: [/src/],
         use: [{ loader: 'ts-loader' }]
       }
     ]
   },
   output: {
     path: __dirname + '/dist',
     filename: 'main.js'
   },
   resolve: {
     extensions: ['.ts', '.js'],
     modules: ['node_modules', path.resolve(__dirname + 'src')]
   }
 }
];

As you can see, the front end (renderer process) and the back-end (main process), are bundled separately. This is because in Electron, the renderer process runs in the browser context and the main process runs in the node context.

Add the webpacking script in package.json

Add the following under scripts in your package.json.

"scripts": {
  "webpack": "webpack",
  "start": "npm run webpack && electron dist/main.js"
}

Run your app

npm start

Add token caching capabilities to your app and enable silent sign ins (advanced)

MSAL Node supports an in-memory cache by default and provides the ICachePlugin interface to perform cache serialization, but does not provide a default way of storing the token cache to disk. If you need persistent cache storage to enable silent sign ins or cross-platform caching, we recommend using the default implementation provided by MSAL Node as an extension. You can import this plugin, and pass the instance of the cache plugin while initializing ElectronAuthenticator.

let config: MsalElectronConfig = {
  ...
  cachePlugin: new PersistenceCachePlugin(filePersistence) //filePersistence is the instance of type IPersistence that you will need to create
};

For more details about how to implement this, see the microsoft-authentication-library-for-js sample.

Next Steps