Month: June 2020

OAUTH with Azure – The just make it work edition

What is this?

I do not know how many times I have looked for an article explaining the just make it work part of how to authenticate to Azure from an application calling an Azure API. I usually find myself in a very long article on scope and OAUTH vs OAUTH2 vs OpenID.

This is more for me as documentation and perhaps for you as well, and it will not go thru why you should configure anything in a particular way. It is just a make it work.

If you do not know how to create an App Registration (necessary for login) or how to get the information used below, I have created a post here.

The three stages of logging in

  1. Get the information you need.
  2. Login to get a Token
  3. Use the Token in an API-call.

Getting the information you need

You will need:

  1. A Client ID
  2. A Client Secret
  3. The Azure Tenant ID
  4. Know which resource you are using

The 1, 2 and 3

The Client ID and the Tenant ID you can get from the App Registration Overview page of your app.
file

The client secret is either something you previously saved or something you created. Take a look at my post. Click on "Create the App Secret" in the Table of contents at the top if you need more information on how to create a secret.

The resource

This is the only tricky part.

  • If you need to manipulate about 90% of Azure you use https://management.azure.com/
  • If you are login into Storage Account you should/could use https://storage.azure.com/

Postman

The number one client for calling and testing APIs.

Login to get a Token (with Postman)

Gather all the information you have above and lets get to configuring.
You can use variables and environment settings for these.

  • Set the URI to: https://login.microsoftonline.com/[Tenant ID Goes here]/oauth2/token
  • Set the verb to POST.
  • Set the format of the body to form-data
  • Fill in the data:
    • client_id: Your Client ID
    • client_secret: Your client secret (password)
    • resource: see heading just above this
    • grant_type: client_credentials
  • Click Send and receive your access-token.
    file

    Bonus content for Postman

    If you want to be fancy, add a script to the test part and assign the token to a local variable for use in other calls.

    pm.test(pm.info.requestName, () => {
    pm.response.to.not.be.error;
    pm.response.to.not.have.jsonBody('error');
    });
    pm.environment.set("<your variable>", pm.response.json().access_token);

    Use the token in the API-call (with Postman)

    Now that you have your token, you can use it in other calls.

  • Simply click Authorization
  • In the dropdown select Bearer Token and paste your token in the token-field to the right.
    If you used the fancy script, use the variable instead.
    file
  • Done!

PowerShell

If clients scare you and you like using scripts to call APIs and execute stuff, you can use PowerShell.

Login to get a token (with PowerShell)

Doing this with PowerShell is even easier, once you know what and how to call stuff, all the code below is located in the same file.
Gather all the information you have above.

# Fill in the data in a collection
authBody = @{
    'Client_Id' = 'Your Client ID'
    'client_Secret' = 'Your client secret (password)'
    'resource' = 'see previous heading about this'
    'grant_type' = 'client_credentials'
}tenantId = 'Your Tenant GUID'
# Set the URI
tokenUri = "https://login.microsoftonline.com/(tenantId)/oauth2/token"

# Login to get a Token 
# Notice -ContentType and -Formresult = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri tokenUri -ContentType "multipart/form-data" -FormauthBody -Method Post

# A token must be a SecureString when used in later API-calls.
secureToken = ConvertTo-SecureStringresult."access_token" –asplaintext –force

Are you using Windows PowerShell?

If you need to use Windows PowerShell, aka 5.1, you need to replace the Invoke-RestMethod line with:

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri tokenUri -Method Post -BodyauthBody

Note the lack the -Form parameter and -ContentType

Use the token in the API-call (with PowerShell)

When you have your $secureToken you can use it in any API call as a bearer-token.

# Use the token in the API-call
uri = 'https://your api call'response = Invoke-RestMethod -Authentication Bearer -Token secureToken -Uriuri 

Done!

Bonus content on the Token

Did you know that the Token contains information that you can parse? I sure did not.
Visit eiter https://www.jsonwebtoken.io/ or https://jwt.io/ to see the information in the token. You simply paste your token and see what it contains.
Here is an example of a payload for the token I got in Postman:

{
 "aud": "https://management.azure.com/",
 "iss": "https://sts.windows.net/<tenantGUID>/",
 "iat": 1591799017, <-- Issued At
 "nbf": 1591799017, <-- nbf means not before
 "exp": 1591802917, <-- The expiration time in Unix timestamp
 "aio": "42dgYDhp4Pl5Eccb7me1ixxx",
 "appid": "<client ID>",
 "appidacr": "1",
 "idp": "https://sts.windows.net/<tenantGUID>/",
 "oid": "ad049d62-472f-4835-90be-qqqwwwee",
 "rh": "0.AQwAHo4e6q_ta0SWTzChaFpEhgeZB<<<<>>>>>.",
 "sub": "ad049d62-472f-4835-90be-<<<<>>>>",
 "tid": "<tenantGUID>",
 "uti": "HZ0eFQf0akCeUE0hJPgjAA",
 "ver": "1.0"
}

This information can be very useful. The aud (Audiance) should be the same as the resource setting and that might be different in your scenario.

Setting up an App Registration in Azure – The just make it work edition

What is this?

There are a lot of articles out there on how to setup an App Registration in Azure. Most of them contains a lot of useful information on why, rather than how.

This article is only about the how.

What you need to do

  1. Log into Azure
  2. Find the App Registration page.
  3. Create the App registration
  4. Create the App Secret
  5. Where to find information you will probably need later.

The process

Login to Azure

Come on you know this. Why are you even reading this step?

Find the App Registration Page

The easiest way of doing this is to use the search field at the top of the page. Just type App Reg and it should pop up.
file
Select it.

Create the App Registration

On the start page for App Registration, click New Registration at the top left.

  • Give it a useful name. Better than MyDemoApp
  • Make sure the top radio button is selected.
  • Leave the Redirect URI blank and click the Register Button
    file

Create the App Secret

Remember to store the secret somewhere!!!
When you have registered your app you will be forwarded to its starting page.

  • In the menu to the left, select Certificates & secrets
  • In the new page, click the New client secret button.
  • Give it a description and expiration (I always use 1 year for test and dev keys) and click Add.
    file
  • Important! Take it slow!
  • Copy the value of the key created. This is the only time it is shown.
    file
  • Store the key for later use.

Where to find information you will probably need later

When using this App to log in or authenticate you will use additional information, beside the Client Secret.

  • Go to the start page for the App Registration and choose your App.
  • In the start page of your app you will find everything you usually need
  • Here you will find the Client ID (under Application (Client) ID) and
  • Tenant ID, which you need to get a token.
    file

YouTube Session on Data center redundancy

The session

I am a co-admin of the Azure Meetup Stockholm group. We usually host sessions on anything Azure related at an office and usually in the evening. Due to the current situation, corona, we decided to move the sessions to YouTube. I did my first session this Monday (1st of June 2020).

The session is on how you can achieve full redundancy between different Azure data centers in the event of an outage, the challenges this poses and a proposed solution. It also contains a fair bit on more hard core computer science, trying to explain why it is impossible to reach 100%.

Session link.

Bob