I want to execute the signup user-flow in Azureb2c from an ASP.NET Core Web API instead of executing it from our frontend app. To achieve this I found an approach of using API connector.
The documentation of API-Connector says
You can use API connectors to integrate your sign-up user flows with REST APIs to customize the sign-up experience and integrate with external systems
I assume with this explanation that I can execute a user-flow defined in AzureB2C for signin-signup from a Web API as a Http Request. What that is not clear is how the API connector actually work. When we still are in development phase and want to execute the API-Connector (and execute the user-flow via this), what type of http request we are supposed to send? Will it contain the Id/password we had defined when creating the API-Connector along with the user-details that needs to be passed to signup user-flow? What the URL which we had added when creating the API-Connector will be used for?
Unfortunately there is not much data available on API-Connector apart from the Azure official documentation, which I felt a bit confusing.
I am creating a React SPA that will connect to a dotnet Web API backend. I want to use b2c to handle auth.
I want to have endpoints in the API protected based off the claims in the b2c token, also want to check claims in the frontend aswell.
Following along with token enrichment docs - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/add-api-connector-token-enrichment?pivots=b2c-user-flow
I can use an API connector to enrich the token with additional claims before it is sent back to the client, presumably with a function to provide values from my database in a users table.
If my database will also be hosted in azure, how would I develop and test this locally?
Is this flow the best way to achieve the desired behaviour? If not what are alternatives?
I've done two methods when testing 'locally'.
Create an Azure Function echo API service in 'cold' mode to reduce cost. This will allow you to easily ping it and it will ping you back the content. You can also add test cases pretty easily. This isn't really 'local' but, it's low cost and allows you to collaborate with multiple team members.
Use a free web service like Post Test Server. With a couple clicks you are off and testing with lower effort. The problem with this solution is it is public so do not use any proprietary or confidential information. I've created very complex dot notation in body of REST-API technical profile via custom policies and this was effective testing data formatting and internal business logic.
Last option could be creating a web service locally on your device - I haven't done this end-to-end but you would follow this same process as hosting an application locally with localhost.
You can deploy an Azure database solely for development purposes. Or you can just mock the API response so that you can do some basic e2e testing: SPA -> B2C -> API.
In the Imgur API docs, it states that each client must register an application. I'm looking for clarification on what an application is because I'm working on a project for self-hosted software. Would each of my users need to register an application because they are interacting with the API from different domains or is it sufficient if I register an application for them and include the client ID in my distributed code?
Good morning everyone,
I am attempting to pull data from a locally-hosted (in IIS) Web API from a Dynamics 365 plugin. I set up the Web API to use "Individual User Accounts" and made it publicly available. That is working correctly in Postman when I test it as I can get the token fine, then use that token for queries.
My thought was that in the plugin I would request a token using an HttpWebRequest and then use that token for future queries.
My problem is that I cannot call that Web API from a Dynamics 365 plugin at all as I get a security error when I attempt to run the code in the Plugin Registration Tool. Here is what my research has yielded on the topic.
1.) I cannot access the Web API because I have not registered it in/as a "Microsoft Azure Web App." My question on this would be that since we were not planning on using Azure (and I am not sure it fits the safety specifications of this project) "do I have to register it with Azure?"
This quote below is from MSDN on the topic of web service calls in plugins. I'm not sure what I'm missing/violating in my setup.
Web access
Sandboxed plug-ins and custom workflow activities can access the network through the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. This capability provides support for accessing popular web resources like social sites, news feeds, web services, and more. The following web access restrictions apply to this sandbox capability.
Only the HTTP and HTTPS protocols are allowed.
Access to localhost (loopback) is not permitted.
IP addresses cannot be used. You must use a named web address that requires DNS name resolution.
Anonymous authentication is supported and recommended. There is no provision for prompting the logged on user for credentials or saving those credentials.
2.) I have found a lot of people saying that the Plugin Registration Tool will always throw a security error due to my plugin being sandboxed. Does everyone just use trace logs for debugging this?
3.) I have been researching the use of Dynamics 365 Web Hooks but I need this plugin to execute on the "RetrieveMultiple" Event. Is that something I can do with D365 Web Hooks?
Thank you all so much for your help. Have a great day.
Your webservice should have a public accessible https-URL, so dynamics 365 can access it from anywhere. You should secure your webservice by a login mechanismn.
As testing, security and configuration advice you should not add url, username and password in your plugin code, instead make it configurable in a crm record. So you can develop and test on a different webservice instance and your production instance connects to the right webservice without changing the code before deployment.
I have the following scenario:
1.- A web api project in Azure, that I want to secure using Azure AD (I don't mind Token, cookie, whatever, as far as it meets the entire scenario)
2.- An Azure web site in asp.net MVC, also secured by Azure AD. This website has to call the web api controller with SSO (I'm using same Azure AD in the entire scenario)
3.- Some JavaScript code running in a page in SharePoint Online, also calling the web api controller in any secure way (The Office 365 tenant is also using same Azure AD). If you don't know about SharePoint, let's say I have an SPA project where I can only use Javascript and html (no server side code).
Following some of the MS Azure AD samples and some blogs from Vittorio Bertocci I'm able to get the points 1 and 2 working fine, using OWIN and Oppen ID connect. However, seems impossible to achieve point 3. As I'm inside a page in SharePoint Online, I can only use javascript, and not any server side code. I'd like to get a valid token for the current user, that is already logged in SP, and remember that SP uses same Azure AD that web api site.
Can I call the Azure AD and get a valid token, just from client code?
I'm open to any possible solution. I can do whatever in the web api project. If you are thinking in a SharePoint app with an appPart, and the appPart calls the web api from server side code, I agree that will work, but it's an option that is not allowed at the moment :(
Many thanks.
I have similar needs. While waiting for a Microsoft sponsored solution we’re working on the following approach.
3) in Your solution (i.e. HTML page with JavaScript, hosted in SharePoint Online and running in Browser) will call Services in 1) (i.e. Web Api Service layer in Azure).
In Our case we only want to validate that the calls made from SharePoint Online (via users browser, i.e. JavaScript) originate from a correct Office 365 / SharePoint Online user in our tenant.
We are opting out of using the App Model as we only want some simple HTML / JavaScript pages in our Intranet and don’t want App Webs. The Web Api server side code is kind of our “Web Part” code behind.
Change to the solution after trying it out and having workable code:
The auth cookies are ReadOnly and cannot be used. Instead we have registered one metod in our service layer as App in SharePoint Online (via appregnew.aspx). That methods url (e.g. https://cloudservice.customer.com/api/authentication/token) is registered as App start page in the app manifest and is deployed to a site Collection.
Now we can call our App via https://customer.sharepoint.com/sites/devassets/_layouts/15/appredirect.aspx?instance_id={GUID} i a jQuery ajax call and parse the result. AppRedirect sends the correct SPAuthToken which we use in our service endpoint (i.e. App start page) to call back to SharePoint and check context.Web.CurrentUser. User email is then stored in Table Storage with a generated Token which we send back to the caller (i.e. the jQuery ajax call to app redirect).
That token is then used in all other service layer calls in order to be sure of who is calling our service layer and in some cases perform authorization in our service layer.
Note, You can use the same approach in order to store Refresh and AccessToken in your client and provide that in all calls to your service from your client and use those tokens in order to do App Calls back to SharePoint. This enables HTML UI in SharePoint host webs and server code using user context in Azure service layer.
To follow up, ADAL.js has recently been released, and the ability to use CORS with O365 APIs was recently added, enabling a scenario for script clients to communicate with services protected by Azure AD, such as your Web API.
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/adal-js-cors-with-o365-apis-files-sharepoint
UPDATE 2018:
This is now supported by SharePoint Online and the SPFx development model, and officially documented, for instance here
Consume enterprise APIs secured with Azure AD in SharePoint Framework
Being said that the work done meanwhile by Vittorio, Kirk, and their teams, but extending that also to Andrew that has delivered great samples, is awesome; that doesn't really fully reply the original question because one of the requirements is to don't run the component as Add-in Part.
If you try to use ADAL JS (which starts its own OAuth flow) hosting that directly in a SP page, that's not going to work, or anyway you can expect a weird behavior for the user (cause of client redirects happening on the browser).
The solution proposed by Peter Karpinski is interesting, and will work matching the requirements in the original question, but requires quite some complexity and additional management/resources.
This recent article provides an alternative solution similar to Peter's one, but requiring less 'extras' and somewhat simpler, also reusing user's SP identity.
Consuming Azure Hosted Web API from SharePoint Online using JavaScript and Office 365 identities
and doesn't either require the use of ADAL on the client side and the implementation of custom security provider / token issuer on the server side.
The identity (cookie) will be passed via properly handling CORS (documentation) on both sides.
However, as you can read in my comments to that blog, this won't work normally with IE due to its security zone implementation. You'll have to be sure you have control on IE security zones on the clients, or have an alternative solution specific for IE.
As of today AAD does not support the OAuth2 implicit flow (or OpenId Connect variants) hence you can't obtain a token from AAD using a user-agent (browser), regardless of whether you hit the wire handcrafting the protocol or using a library.
However keep an eye on future announcements, as this is an important scenario for us!
HTH
Cheers,
V.
update we now support the implicit flow on our server, and we released a library for helping you consume the new feature: http://www.cloudidentity.com/blog/2015/02/19/introducing-adal-js-v1/
Thank youi for r your patience!
The fact that you say you can use only HTML/JS let me guess you're having a SharePoint-hosted App.
Azure AD Authentication Library (ADAL) doesn't provide yet in this moment support for HTML5.
I've been looking since a while (almost one year) on how to implement something as you say; but I couldn't find any working solution, which doesn't make use also of some 'code-behind'.
I'd suggest you then to move to a Provider-hosted App, where you'll be able to have some C# code, and make use of ADAL to retrieve and reuse the OAuth token.
Also, I think is worth to look at this documentation page:
Choose patterns for developing and hosting your app for SharePoint
at section Match your hosting pattern with your development goals
thanks for your help.
Well, it's not a SP-Hosted App, but it's same scenario. It's just a SP page in SP Online, so I can only use JS code like in a SP-hosted app.
As I said in my question, I agree the Provider hosted app is likely the right (or at least, the unique) solution, but that means to build and app, deploy it, and add teh appPart manually to the page (is not easy to package in a WSP). So, this solution is quite hard, when you only want to make some AJAX calls and show some data.
However, after all that I've seen, I think we can't do anything else. I'm gonna wait some more days to see if someone know any weird workarround that could work, and if not, I'll mark your answer as valid.
Thanks again!