How to call a downstream web API from a daemon app

.NET daemon apps can call a web API. .NET daemon apps can also call several preapproved web APIs.

Calling a web API from a daemon application

Here's how to use the token to call an API:

.NET

Microsoft.Identity.Web abstracts away the complexity of MSAL.NET. It provides you with higher-level APIs that handle the internals of MSAL.NET for you, such as processing Conditional Access errors, caching.

Here's the Program.cs of the daemon app calling a downstream API:

C#

using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Microsoft.Identity.Abstractions;
using Microsoft.Identity.Web;

// In the Program.cs, acquire a token for your downstream API

var tokenAcquirerFactory = TokenAcquirerFactory.GetDefaultInstance();
tokenAcquirerFactory.Services.AddDownstreamApi("MyApi",
    tokenAcquirerFactory.Configuration.GetSection("MyWebApi"));
var sp = tokenAcquirerFactory.Build();

var api = sp.GetRequiredService<IDownstreamApi>();
var result = await api.GetForAppAsync<IEnumerable<TodoItem>>("MyApi");
Console.WriteLine($"result = {result?.Count()}");

Here's the Program.cs of a daemon app that calls Microsoft Graph:

C#

var tokenAcquirerFactory = TokenAcquirerFactory.GetDefaultInstance();
tokenAcquirerFactory.Services.AddMicrosoftGraph();
var serviceProvider = tokenAcquirerFactory.Build();
try
{
    GraphServiceClient graphServiceClient = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<GraphServiceClient>();
    var users = await graphServiceClient.Users
        .GetAsync(r => r.Options.WithAppOnly());
    Console.WriteLine($"{users.Count} users");
    Console.ReadKey();
}
catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine("We could not retrieve the user's list: " + $"{ex}"); }

Java

Java

HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

// Set the appropriate header fields in the request header.
conn.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken);
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json");

String response = HttpClientHelper.getResponseStringFromConn(conn);

int responseCode = conn.getResponseCode();
if(responseCode != HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
    throw new IOException(response);
}

JSONObject responseObject = HttpClientHelper.processResponse(responseCode, response);

Node.js

Using an HTTP client like Axios, call the API endpoint URI with an access token as the authorization bearer.

JavaScript

const axios = require('axios');

async function callApi(endpoint, accessToken) {

    const options = {
        headers: {
            Authorization: `Bearer ${accessToken}`
        }
    };

    console.log('request made to web API at: ' + new Date().toString());

    try {
        const response = await axios.default.get(endpoint, options);
        return response.data;
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error)
        return error;
    }
};

Python

Python

endpoint = "url to the API"
http_headers = {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + result['access_token'],
                'Accept': 'application/json',
                'Content-Type': 'application/json'}
data = requests.get(endpoint, headers=http_headers, stream=False).json()

.NET low level

AuthenticationResult properties in MSAL.NET

The methods to acquire tokens return AuthenticationResult. For async methods, Task<AuthenticationResult> returns.

In MSAL.NET, AuthenticationResult exposes:

• AccessToken for the web API to access resources. This parameter is a string, usually a Base-64-encoded JWT. The client should never look inside the access token. The format isn't guaranteed to remain stable, and it can be encrypted for the resource. Writing code that depends on access token content on the client is one of the biggest sources of errors and client logic breaks. For more information, see Access tokens.
• IdToken for the user. This parameter is an encoded JWT. For more information, see ID tokens.
• ExpiresOn tells the date and time when the token expires.
• TenantId contains the tenant in which the user was found. For guest users in Microsoft Entra B2B scenarios, the tenant ID is the guest tenant, not the unique tenant. When the token is delivered for a user, AuthenticationResult also contains information about this user. For confidential client flows where tokens are requested with no user for the application, this user information is null.
• The Scopes for which the token was issued.
• The unique ID for the user.

IAccount

MSAL.NET defines the notion of an account through the IAccount interface. This breaking change provides the right semantics. The same user can have several accounts, in different Microsoft Entra directories. Also, MSAL.NET provides better information in the case of guest scenarios because home account information is provided. The following diagram shows the structure of the IAccount interface.

The AccountId class identifies an account in a specific tenant with the properties shown in the following table.

Property	Description
TenantId	A string representation for a GUID, which is the ID of the tenant where the account resides.
ObjectId	A string representation for a GUID, which is the ID of the user who owns the account in the tenant.
Identifier	Unique identifier for the account. Identifier is the concatenation of ObjectId and TenantId separated by a comma. They're not Base 64 encoded.

The IAccount interface represents information about a single account. The same user can be present in different tenants, which means that a user can have multiple accounts. Its members are shown in the following table.

Property	Description
Username	A string that contains the displayable value in UserPrincipalName (UPN) format, for example, john.doe@contoso.com. This string can be null, unlike HomeAccountId and HomeAccountId.Identifier, which won't be null. This property replaces the DisplayableId property of IUser in previous versions of MSAL.NET.
Environment	A string that contains the identity provider for this account, for example, login.microsoftonline.com. This property replaces the IdentityProvider property of IUser, except that IdentityProvider also had information about the tenant, in addition to the cloud environment. Here, the value is only the host.
HomeAccountId	The account ID of the home account for the user. This property uniquely identifies the user across Microsoft Entra tenants.

Use the token to call a protected API

After AuthenticationResult is returned by MSAL in result, add it to the HTTP authorization header before you make the call to access the protected web API.

C#

httpClient = new HttpClient();
httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", result.AccessToken);

// Call the web API.
HttpResponseMessage response = await _httpClient.GetAsync(apiUri);
...

Calling several APIs

For daemon apps, the web APIs that you call need to be preapproved. There's no incremental consent with daemon apps. (There's no user interaction.) The tenant admin needs to provide consent in advance for the application and all the API permissions. If you want to call several APIs, acquire a token for each resource, each time calling AcquireTokenForClient. MSAL uses the application token cache to avoid unnecessary service calls.

Next steps

• Learn more by building a React Single-page application (SPA) that signs in users in the following multi-part tutorial series.

• Explore Microsoft identity platform service / daemon code samples