Connect to Azure to create an Application registration

Question

I'm trying to write a C# console app that will register an application in Azure Active Directory. It should work just as the web application project creation wizard in VS 2013 when you Change Authentication and select Organizational Accounts in Azure.

Following the fiddler trace, I can see that it authenticates the user using wsfederation and an oauth2 token and then uses the graph.windows.net graph api to configuration the AAD directoryObjects service principal and application.

I have tried to use the sample Graph API app, but it requires the app be registered first so that I have the clientId (application id) and password (key) to send in the Acquire Token request using the Windows Azure AD Authentication Library for .NET.

I've tried using a bunch of the different Azure APIs but they all have my chicken and egg problem, I want to use an unregistered client application to register an application in AAD. I need to avoid Configuring Application Authentication and Authorization for the Graph API so that the user has no manual steps.

Does anyone know how Visual Studio does it, using just the user login with browser prompt or if there is a standard application id and password that can be used to access the graph API, like there is the standard login URL, https://login.windows.net/common? Some C# samples would be greatly appreciated.

This post does the Application creation, but requires a clientId and password, which I don't think I have.

Answer 1

You can't register a new application using the Graph API from an unregistered client. The only reason the VS2013 flow works is because VS2013 is already registered in a special way within Azure AD -- it's a first party application and has unique permissions. In my Fiddler trace, VS2013 uses a client ID of 872cd9fa-d31f-45e0-9eab-6e460a02d1f1. Technically you can use this client ID and the redirect URI of VS2013 to initiate sign-on with Azure AD. This still involves user interaction (the user has to authenticate via browser pop-up) so it doesn't meet your requirement for "no manual steps," but it's somewhat helpful for understanding the protocol flows and how registration works.

The bottom line is that if you want to call the Graph API without user interaction (client credential flow), the client needs to be registered with the proper application permissions.