Setting up Azure AD Authentication

Setting up Azure AD Authentication with Genocs's Web API

For the Azure AD integration to work with this template, you have to create 2 App Registrations under your Azure AD tenant with the right settings, and then fill out the AzureAd section in Configurations/security.json to hook those apps up. This guide will walk you through doing all that.

Create the GenocsApi Application Registration #

• Log into the azure portal and go to the Azure Active Directory blade. Make sure you are in the directory where you want your apps to be registered. You can switch directories by clicking on your account info in the top right corner.

• Under Manage, click on App registrations, and click the New registration button on top:

  

• Fill in Genocs-Api (or whichever name you want for this app) as Name. Under Supported account types select Accounts in any organizational directory - Multitenant and click on Register:

  

Expose the Api #

• On the newly created App’s blade, under Manage, click on Expose an API, then click on Add a scope:

  

• An Application ID URIq will automatically be filled out. Click on Save and continue:

  

• On the next screen, fill in access_as_user as Scope name, select Admins and users as Who can consent? and fill out the display names and descriptions like in the screenshot below, then click on Add scope:

  

Add App roles #

• Under Manage, click on App roles and click the Create app role button on top:

  

• Fill in Administrators as Display name and Admin as value. Especially the value is important, as this has to match the name of the role in the Genocs-Api application itself. Click on Apply:

  

• In the same way, create app roles for the other roles in your application (by default the only other role is the Basic role).

Assign App roles to specific users in AzureAD #

You will have to assign those freshly created App roles to the AzureAd users to which you want to grant access to your application:

• On the Azure Active Directory blade, under Manage click on Enterprise applications and select the Genocs-Api application:

  

• Under Manage, click on Users and groups and click the Add user/group button on top:

  

• On the next screen, you can select one or more users/groups, select an App role and click on the Assign button to assign the role the the specified users/groups.

Create the Client Application Registration #

• Go back again to the Azure Active Directory blade and under Manage, click on App registrations, and click the New registration button on top again.

• This time, fill out Genocs-Client as Name, choose again for Accounts in any organizational directory - Multitenant and under Redirect URI, select Single-page application (SPA) and fill out the url https://localhost:5001/swagger/oauth2-redirect.html. Click on Register:

  

Add permission for the Api #

• On the newly created App’s blade, under Manage, click on API permissions and click the Add a permission button:

  

• On the next view, under Select an API, click on My APIs and select Genocs-Api:

  

• Then, under Select permissions, check the access_as_user permission and click on Add permissions:

  

Add Blazor Client application #

This should be enough for testing from swagger. But you’ll probably will want to use the client application as well. There’s 2 options here. Or you can add the Redirect URI for the client application to the same App registration you just created (click on Authentication under Manage and then on Add URI), or you can create a whole new client app registration specifically for this client, just like described in the steps above, but with another Redirect URI. In any case, the Redirect URI for the blazor app you will want to use is https://localhost:5002/authentication/login-callback.

Update the AzureAd settings on the Web Api project #

Now that’s all set up, the only thing left is updating the configuration to use AzureAd. On the Web API project, under src\Host\Configurations, open security.json and fill out the required settings:

• Provider: set to AzureAd
• Instance: set to https://login.microsoftonline.com/
• Domain: you can find your domain in the Azure Active Directory blade on the Overview page under Primary domain.
• TenantId: set to organizations
• ClientId: set to the Application (client) ID of the Genocs-Api App registration (you can find this on the Overview page of the App registration in Azure)
• Scopes: set to access_as_user
• RootIssuer: set to https://sts.windows.net/<Your Tenant ID>/ (your Tenant ID is also on the Overview page of the Azure Active Directory blade)

Then for swagger to work you need the following settings under the Swagger node in security.json:

• AuthorizationUrl: set to https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations/oauth2/v2.0/authorize
• TokenUrl: set to https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations/oauth2/v2.0/token
• ApiScope: set to the full name of the api scope we created in the Genocs-Api App registration above (api://<ClientId of the Genocs-Api App registration>/access_as_user)
• OpenIdClientId: set to the Application (client) ID of the Genocs-Client App registration (or the one you specifically created for swagger).

Update the AzureAd settings on the Blazor Client project #

Then for the blazor client to work, you need the following settings over there in the wwwroot/appsettings.json file:

• AuthProvider: set to AzureAd
• Authority: set to https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations
• ClientId: set to the Application (client) ID of the Genocs-Client App registration (or the one you specifically created for the blazor client).
• ValidateAuthority: set to true
• ApiScope: set to the full name of the api scope we created in the Genocs-Api App registration (api://<ClientId of the Genocs-Api App registration>/access_as_user) same as before with the swagger client.

Configuration for Postman #

TODO - Coming soon

Test it out #

• Start the Web API project and browse to https://localhost:5001/swagger when you click on the Authorize button on the top right, you should be redirected to the Microsoft login site. Log in with a user to which you granted app roles and you should be redirected back to swagger with the padlock closed. When you now issue an api call, the Authorization header should be sent with the bearer token received from AzureAd.

• Start the Blazor Client project and browse to https://localhost:5002/. You should be immediately redirected to the Microsoft login site. And after logging in, you should be redirected back to the homepage of the blazor client.

AzureAd and multitenancy #

About the RootIssuersetting in security.json. This should be set to the issuer of the root tenant in AzureAd. When someone is logging in from that AzureAD tenant, the local root tenant will automatically be selected.

For the other tenants there’s an “issuer” field in the tenants table to map those. There’s still a part which has to be implemented for mutltiple tenants from AzureAd though, as there needs to be some kind of “onboarding” experience inside AzureAD when a new tenant needs access to you application. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/multitenant-identity/signup for more info about this.

AzureAd users/roles vs. local users/roles #

In any case, with AzureAd, when a user logs in and there doesn’t exist a local user yet in the local tenant for that AzureAd user/tenant, one gets created automatically. It will also immediately have the same roles assigned like the ones in AzureAd. When an already existing user logs in and there are roles in AzureAd for that user which are not yet assigned to the local user, they will automatically be assigned. Currently there will never be any roles removed from a user. So removing the role assignment from AzureAd will not automatically remove it from the local user when he logs in. This to allow for people to use the role/permission management inside the app without having to do it in Azure.