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.NET browserless application using MSAL.NET to authenticate users with the device code flow against Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM)

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Overview

This sample demonstrates a .NET 7.0 browserless application that authenticates users against Azure AD for Customers using the device code flow.

Scenario

  1. The client Dotnet browserless application uses the to sign-in a user and obtain a JWT ID Token from Azure AD for Customers.
  2. The ID Token proves that the user has successfully authenticated against Azure AD for Customers.

Scenario Image

Prerequisites

This sample will not work with a personal Microsoft account. If you're signed in to the Azure portal with a personal Microsoft account and have not created a user account in your directory before, you will need to create one before proceeding.

Setup the sample

Step 1: Clone or download this repository

From your shell or command line:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ms-identity-ciam-dotnet-tutorial.git.git

or download and extract the repository .zip file.

⚠️ To avoid path length limitations on Windows, we recommend cloning into a directory near the root of your drive.

Step 2: Register the sample application(s) in your tenant

There is one project in this sample. To register it, you can:

  • follow the steps below for manually register your apps
  • or use PowerShell scripts that:
    • automatically creates the Azure AD applications and related objects (passwords, permissions, dependencies) for you.
    • modify the projects' configuration files.
Expand this section if you want to use this automation:

⚠️ If you have never used Microsoft Graph PowerShell before, we recommend you go through the App Creation Scripts Guide once to ensure that your environment is prepared correctly for this step.

  1. Ensure that you have PowerShell 7 or later which can be installed at [this link](this link).

  2. Run the script to create your Azure AD application and configure the code of the sample application accordingly.

  3. For interactive process -in PowerShell, run:

    cd .\AppCreationScripts\
.\Configure.ps1 -TenantId "[Optional] - your tenant id" -AzureEnvironmentName "[Optional] - Azure environment, defaults to 'Global'"

Other ways of running the scripts are described in App Creation Scripts guide. The scripts also provide a guide to automated application registration, configuration and removal which can help in your CI/CD scenarios.

Choose the Azure AD for Customers tenant where you want to create your applications

To manually register the apps, as a first step you'll need to:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
  2. If your account is present in more than one Azure AD for Customers tenant, select your profile at the top right corner in the menu on top of the page, and then switch directory to change your portal session to the desired Azure AD for Customers tenant.

Create User Flows

Please refer to: Tutorial: Create user flow in Azure Active Directory CIAM

ℹ️ To enable password reset in Customer Identity Access Management (CIAM) in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), please refer to: Tutorial: Enable self-service password reset

Add External Identity Providers

Please refer to:

Register the client app (msal-dotnet-browserless)

  1. Navigate to the Azure portal and select the Azure AD for Customers service.
  2. Select the App Registrations blade on the left, then select New registration.
  3. In the Register an application page that appears, enter your application's registration information:
    1. In the Name section, enter a meaningful application name that will be displayed to users of the app, for example msal-dotnet-browserless.
    2. Under Supported account types, select Accounts in this organizational directory only
    3. Select Register to create the application.
  4. In the Overview blade, find and note the Application (client) ID. You use this value in your app's configuration file(s) later in your code.
  5. In the app's registration screen, select the Authentication blade to the left.
    1. In the Advanced settings | Default client type section, flip the switch for Treat application as a public client to Yes.
    2. Click Save to save your changes.
  6. Since this app signs-in users, we will now proceed to select delegated permissions, which is is required by apps signing-in users.
    1. In the app's registration screen, select the API permissions blade in the left to open the page where we add access to the APIs that your application needs:
    2. Select the Add a permission button and then:
    3. Ensure that the Microsoft APIs tab is selected.
    4. In the Commonly used Microsoft APIs section, select Microsoft Graph
    5. In the Delegated permissions section, select openid, offline_access in the list. Use the search box if necessary.
    6. Select the Add permissions button at the bottom.
  7. At this stage, the permissions are assigned correctly, but since it's a CIAM tenant, the users themselves cannot consent to these permissions. To get around this problem, we'd let the tenant administrator consent on behalf of all users in the tenant. Select the Grant admin consent for {tenant} button, and then select Yes when you are asked if you want to grant consent for the requested permissions for all accounts in the tenant. You need to be a tenant admin to be able to carry out this operation.
Configure the client app (msal-dotnet-browserless) to use your app registration

Open the project in your IDE (like Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code) to configure the code.

In the steps below, "ClientID" is the same as "Application ID" or "AppId".

  1. Open the appsettings.json file.
  2. Find the placeholder Enter_the_Tenant_Subdomain_Here and replace it with the Directory (tenant) subdomain. For instance, if your tenant primary domain is contoso.onmicrosoft.com, use contoso.
  3. Find the placeholder Enter_the_Application_Id_Here and replace the existing value with the application ID (clientId) of msal-dotnet-browserless app copied from the Azure portal.

Step 3: Running the sample

If you are using Visual Studio Code, type the following in a VS Code integrated terminal:

    cd 1-Authentication/4-sign-in-device-code
    dotnet run

If you are using Visual Studio, follow the instructions here.

Explore the sample

When the app launches, copy the suggested URL https://microsoft.com/devicelogin from the terminal and visit it in a browser. Then, copy the device code from terminal and follow the prompts on https://microsoft.com/devicelogin.

Once you are successfully signed-in, the terminal should display the claims in your ID token.

ℹ️ Did the sample not work for you as expected? Then please reach out to us using the GitHub Issues page.

We'd love your feedback!

Were we successful in addressing your learning objective? Consider taking a moment to share your experience with us.

Troubleshooting

Expand for troubleshooting info

To provide feedback on or suggest features for Azure Active Directory, visit User Voice page.

About the code

The code for handling the token acquisition process is simple, as it boils down to calling the AcquireTokenWithDeviceCodeAsync method of PublicClientApplication to which you pass a callback that will contain a DeviceCodeResult object which contains the URL a user will naviagte to and authenticate themselves. After that's done, an AuthenticationResult is returned containing an access token and some basic account information.

var result = await app.AcquireTokenWithDeviceCode(new [] { "openid" }, async deviceCode => {
    Console.WriteLine($"In a broswer, navigate to the URL '{deviceCode.VerificationUrl}' and enter the code '{deviceCode.UserCode}'");
    await Task.FromResult(0);
})
.ExecuteAsync();

Console.WriteLine($"You signed in as {result.Account.Username}");

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute to this sample, see CONTRIBUTING.MD.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

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