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Quickstart: Acquire a token and call Microsoft Graph API from a Node.js console app using app's identity

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Quickstart: Acquire a token and call Microsoft Graph from a Node.js console app

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In this quickstart, you download and run a code sample that demonstrates how a Node.js console application can get an access token using the app's identity to call the Microsoft Graph API and display a list of users in the directory. The code sample demonstrates how an unattended job or Windows service can run with an application identity, instead of a user's identity.

This quickstart uses the Microsoft Authentication Library for Node.js (MSAL Node) with the client credentials grant.

Prerequisites

Download and configure the sample app

Step 1: Configure the application in Azure portal

For the code sample for this quickstart to work, you need to create a client secret, and add Graph API's User.Read.All application permission.

Make these changes for me

Already configured Your application is configured with these attributes.

Step 2: Download the Node.js sample project

Download the code sample

Note

Enter_the_Supported_Account_Info_Here

If you try to run the application at this point, you'll receive HTTP 403 - Forbidden error: Insufficient privileges to complete the operation. This error happens because any app-only permission requires admin consent: a Global Administrator of your directory must give consent to your application. Select one of the options below depending on your role:

Global tenant administrator

If you are a Global Administrator, go to API Permissions page select Grant admin consent for > Enter_the_Tenant_Name_Here

Standard user

If you're a standard user of your tenant, then you need to ask a Global Administrator to grant admin consent for your application. To do this, give the following URL to your administrator:

https://login.microsoftonline.com/Enter_the_Tenant_Id_Here/adminconsent?client_id=Enter_the_Application_Id_Here

Step 4: Run the application

Locate the sample's root folder (where package.json resides) in a command prompt or console. You'll need to install the dependencies of this sample once:

npm install

Then, run the application via command prompt or console:

node . --op getUsers

You should see on the console output some JSON fragment representing a list of users in your Microsoft Entra directory.

About the code

Below, some of the important aspects of the sample application are discussed.

MSAL Node

MSAL Node is the library used to sign in users and request tokens used to access an API protected by Microsoft identity platform. As described, this quickstart requests tokens by application permissions (using the application's own identity) instead of delegated permissions. The authentication flow used in this case is known as OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow. For more information on how to use MSAL Node with daemon apps, see Scenario: Daemon application.

You can install MSAL Node by running the following npm command.

npm install @azure/msal-node --save

MSAL initialization

You can add the reference for MSAL by adding the following code:

const msal = require('@azure/msal-node');

Then, initialize MSAL using the following code:

const msalConfig = {
    auth: {
        clientId: "Enter_the_Application_Id_Here",
        authority: "https://login.microsoftonline.com/Enter_the_Tenant_Id_Here",
        clientSecret: "Enter_the_Client_Secret_Here",
   }
};
const cca = new msal.ConfidentialClientApplication(msalConfig);
Where: Description
clientId Is the Application (client) ID for the application registered in the Azure portal. You can find this value in the app's Overview page in the Azure portal.
authority The STS endpoint for user to authenticate. Usually https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant} for public cloud, where {tenant} is the name of your tenant or your tenant Id.
clientSecret Is the client secret created for the application in Azure portal.

For more information, please see the reference documentation for ConfidentialClientApplication

Requesting tokens

To request a token using app's identity, use acquireTokenByClientCredential method:

const tokenRequest = {
    scopes: [ 'https://graph.microsoft.com/.default' ],
};

const tokenResponse = await cca.acquireTokenByClientCredential(tokenRequest);
Where: Description
tokenRequest Contains the scopes requested. For confidential clients, this should use the format similar to {Application ID URI}/.default to indicate that the scopes being requested are the ones statically defined in the app object set in the Azure portal (for Microsoft Graph, {Application ID URI} points to https://graph.microsoft.com). For custom web APIs, {Application ID URI} is defined under Expose an API section in Azure portal's Application Registration.
tokenResponse The response contains an access token for the scopes requested.

Help and support

If you need help, want to report an issue, or want to learn about your support options, see Help and support for developers.

Next steps

To learn more about daemon/console app development with MSAL Node, see the tutorial:

Daemon application that calls web APIs