CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptazureazure-active-directorymicrosoft-graph-apiazure-ad-msal
Question3r
Question3r

Reputation: 3742

use MSAL.js for NodeJs

I would like to authenticate against Azure to claim an access token and use it for the Graph API. So I've done my homework and started with this guide

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/auth-v2-service

I was able to authenticate successfully. But the amount of code was huge. This is my own code that I wrote for the authentication:

https://pastebin.com/7sYWyhZJ

If a scripts needs to access the current session token it just needs to call the getAuthenticationInfo function. Due to the huge amount of code I was wondering if my code is redundant or maybe not correct.

A little bit of research brought me to MSAL.js which (I think) handles the authentication stuff for me. MSAL uses a different approach than the guide from the link I posted above. I started with this plain JS demo code (I only have a demo account so the credentials shouldn't matter)

const msal = require('msal');

async function start() {
    const clientId = 'bec52b71-dc94-4577-9f8d-b8536ed0e73d';
    const clientSecret = 'OV/NkBIWH7d3G/BGyJQN3vxQA]fT6qK@';
    const tenant = '2c1714e1-1030-4da9-af5e-59630d7fe05f';
    const scope = 'https://graph.microsoft.com/.default';
    const grantType = 'client_credentials';

    const msalConfig = {
        auth: {
            clientId
        }
    };

    const msalInstance = new msal.UserAgentApplication(msalConfig);

    const tokenRequest = {
        scope,
    };

    try {
        const tokenResponse = await msalInstance.acquireTokenSilent(tokenRequest);
        const { accessToken } = tokenResponse;

        console.log(accessToken);
    } catch (error) {
        throw error;
    }
}
start();

I was wondering where I should put my login credentials here. But when I run the code I get the following error

ReferenceError: window is not defined

It seems that the code tries to access the browser storage. But my code is running in a Node environment. So would someone be so nice to tell me how I can transfer my code from the snippet which is based on the first link to the MSAL approach?

As far as I understood MSAL should do the trick for me, I don't need to write the authentication code myself and can shorten my own code.

Thanks in advance!

Update

Based on Allen Wus answer I tried out ADAL.js and this code seems to work fine

const { AuthenticationContext } = require('adal-node');

const clientId = 'bec52b71-dc94-4577-9f8d-b8536ed0e73d';
const clientSecret = 'OV/NkBIWH7d3G/BGyJQN3vxQA]fT6qK@';
const tenant = '2c1714e1-1030-4da9-af5e-59630d7fe05f';
const authorityHostUrl = 'https://login.windows.net';
const authorityUrl = `${authorityHostUrl}/${tenant}`;
const resource = 'https://graph.microsoft.com';
const context = new AuthenticationContext(authorityUrl);

context.acquireTokenWithClientCredentials(resource, clientId, clientSecret, (error, tokenResponse) => {
    if (error) {
        throw error;
    }

    console.log(tokenResponse);
});

The only thing I didn't get is what resource is. Feel free to add a comment explaining it :)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4102

Answers (1)

Allen Wu
Allen Wu

Reputation: 16438

You get this error "ReferenceError: window is not defined" because browser thing doesn't exist on Node.

MSAL.js is designed to be used in client side JavaScript running in a web browser such as in case of single page apps. In another word, it does not support for nodejs currently.

For your console application, you may need to take a look at MSAL .Net.

Or you may be interested in ADAL for nodejs.

Upvotes: 3

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