@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth

What is @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth?

@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth is an npm package that provides various authentication mechanisms for Azure services in Node.js applications. It supports different types of credentials such as service principal, managed identity, and interactive login, making it easier to authenticate and interact with Azure resources.

What are @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth's main functionalities?

Service Principal Authentication

This feature allows you to authenticate using a service principal, which is a non-interactive way to authenticate with Azure. You need to provide the client ID, secret, and tenant ID (domain) of the service principal.

const msRestNodeAuth = require('@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth');

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithServicePrincipalSecret(clientId, secret, domain).then((credentials) => {
  // Use the credentials to interact with Azure services
  console.log('Authenticated with service principal');
}).catch((err) => {
  console.error('Error authenticating with service principal:', err);
});

Managed Identity Authentication

This feature allows you to authenticate using a managed identity, which is useful for applications running on Azure services like Azure VMs or Azure App Service. It eliminates the need to manage credentials.

const msRestNodeAuth = require('@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth');

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithManagedIdentity().then((credentials) => {
  // Use the credentials to interact with Azure services
  console.log('Authenticated with managed identity');
}).catch((err) => {
  console.error('Error authenticating with managed identity:', err);
});

Interactive Login

This feature allows you to authenticate interactively, which is useful for development and testing purposes. It opens a browser window for the user to log in and grant access.

const msRestNodeAuth = require('@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth');

msRestNodeAuth.interactiveLogin().then((credentials) => {
  // Use the credentials to interact with Azure services
  console.log('Authenticated with interactive login');
}).catch((err) => {
  console.error('Error authenticating with interactive login:', err);
});

Other packages similar to @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth

@azure/identity

@azure/identity is another package that provides Azure Active Directory token authentication support across the Azure SDK. It offers a more modern and unified approach to authentication compared to @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth, supporting a wider range of authentication scenarios and integrating seamlessly with other Azure SDK libraries.

adal-node

adal-node is the Active Directory Authentication Library for Node.js. It provides easy-to-use authentication mechanisms for Azure Active Directory. While it is older and less feature-rich compared to @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth, it is still widely used for basic authentication scenarios.

msal-node

msal-node is the Microsoft Authentication Library for Node.js. It is designed to work with the Microsoft identity platform (formerly Azure AD v2.0). It offers more advanced features and better support for modern authentication flows compared to @azure/ms-rest-nodeauth.

README

ms-rest-nodeauth

This library provides different node.js based authentication mechanisms for services in Azure. It also contains rich type definitions thereby providing a good TypeScript experience.

All the authentication methods support callbacks as well as promises. If they are called within an async method in your application then you can use the async/await pattern as well.

Things to consider when using personal accounts:

When using personal accounts, the domain property in the options passed to the authentication methods is mandatory and should be set to the tenant Id. If this property is not set, the credentials created by the authentication methods will not be able to access any of the resources of the personal account. For that same reason, the list of subscriptions expected in the return value of these methods will be empty.

You can get the tenant Id from Azure portal or the Azure CLI. If you need to fetch the tenant Id programmatically, follow the below steps:

• Use any of the authentication methods without setting the domain to get a credential. - Call the buildTenantLists(credential) method by sending that same credential as the first parameter to get the list of all tenants in your account.

You can now use any of the authentication methods and pass in the tenant Id or use the setDomain() method on the existing credential to change the tenant it uses to create the tokens.

Known issue with proxy support

This package uses adal-node which has moved to axios from request as the package of choice for httpRequests since npm support for request is discontinued. However it was noticed later that axios does not support proxies. The adal-node package is taking only security changes and will not be fixing this issue. Therefore, we recommend using https-proxy-agent as suggested in the issue linked in case you need proxies for your application. For example:

// paste this code to support proxy environment
// reference:
// https://github.com/axios/axios/issues/2072#issuecomment-567473812
const HttpsProxyAgent = require('https-proxy-agent');
const axios = require('axios')
axios.defaults.proxy = false
axios.defaults.httpsAgent = new HttpsProxyAgent('http://MY_PROXY:8888')

Example

username/password based login

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const username = process.env["AZURE_USERNAME"];
const password = process.env["AZURE_PASSWORD"];

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithUsernamePasswordWithAuthResponse(username, password).then((authres) => {
  console.dir(authres, { depth: null })
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

service-principal and secret based login

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const clientId = process.env["CLIENT_ID"];
const secret = process.env["APPLICATION_SECRET"];
const tenantId = process.env["DOMAIN"];

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithServicePrincipalSecretWithAuthResponse(clientId, secret, tenantId).then((authres) => {
  console.dir(authres, { depth: null })
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

service-principal and certificate based login by providing an ABSOLUTE file path to the .pem file

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const clientId = process.env["CLIENT_ID"];
const tenantId = process.env["DOMAIN"];

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithServicePrincipalCertificateWithAuthResponse(clientId, "/Users/user1/foo.pem", tenantId).then((authres) => {
  console.dir(authres, { depth: null })
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

service-principal and certificate based login by providing the certificate and private key (contents of the .pem file)

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const clientId = process.env["CLIENT_ID"];
const tenantId = process.env["DOMAIN"];
const certificate = 
`
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
`;

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithServicePrincipalCertificateWithAuthResponse(clientId, certificate, tenantId).then((authres) => {
  console.dir(authres, { depth: null })
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

interactive/device-code flow login

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

msRestNodeAuth.interactiveLoginWithAuthResponse().then((authres) => {
  console.dir(authres, { depth: null })
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

service-principal authentication from auth file on disk

Before using this method please install az cli from https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli/releases. Then execute az ad sp create-for-rbac --sdk-auth > ${yourFilename.json}.

If you want to create the sp for a different cloud/environment then please execute:

1. az cloud list

2. az cloud set –n

3. az ad sp create-for-rbac --sdk-auth > auth.json // create sp with secret.

      OR
      
   

   az ad sp create-for-rbac --create-cert --sdk-auth > auth.json // create sp with certificate. If the service principal is already created then login with service principal info:

4. az login --service-principal -u <clientId> -p <clientSecret> -t <tenantId>

5. az account show --sdk-auth > auth.json

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const options: msRestNodeAuth.LoginWithAuthFileOptions = {
  filePath: "<file path to auth file>",
}
msRestNodeAuth.loginWithAuthFileWithAuthResponse(options).then((authRes) => {
  console.log(authRes);
  console.log(process.env["AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID"]);
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

MSI (Managed Service Identity) based login from a virtual machine created in Azure.

The code below works for both system managed and user-assigned managed identities. You can leave the options empty if you want to use system managed identity. If you want to use the user-assigned managed identity, you must at least provide the clientId in the options. If your VM has multiple user-assigned managed identities, you must include objectId and identityId in the options as well.

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const options: msRestNodeAuth.MSIVmOptions = {
  // The objectId of the managed identity you would like the token for.
  // Required, if your VM has multiple user-assigned managed identities.
  //
  //     objectId: "your-managed-identity-object-id",
  //

  // The clientId of the managed identity you would like the token for.
  // Required, if your VM has any user-assigned managed identity.
  //
  //     clientId: "your-managed-identity-client-id",
  //

  // The `Azure Resource ID` of the managed identity you would like the token for.
  // Required, if your VM has multiple user-assigned managed identities.
  //
  //     identityId: "your-managed-identity-identity-id",
  //
}

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithVmMSI(options).then((msiTokenRes) => {
  console.log(msiTokenRes);
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

MSI (Managed Service Identity) based login from an AppService or Azure Function created in Azure.

The code below works for both system managed and user-assigned managed identities. You can leave the options empty if you want to use system managed identity. If you want to use the user-assigned managed identity, you must at least provide the clientId in the options.

import * as msRestNodeAuth from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";

const options: msRestNodeAuth.MSIAppServiceOptions = {
  // The clientId of the managed identity you would like the token for.
  // Required, if your app service has user-assigned managed identities.
  //
  //     clientId: "your-managed-identity-client-id"
  //
}

msRestNodeAuth.loginWithAppServiceMSI(options).then((msiTokenRes) => {
  console.log(msiTokenRes);
}).catch((err) => {
  console.log(err);
});

Getting credentials via Azure CLI.

Pre-requisite

• Install azure-cli. For more information see here.
• Login via az login
• Detailed sample over here.

import { AzureCliCredentials } from "@azure/ms-rest-nodeauth";
import { ServiceClient, RequestPrepareOptions } from "@azure/ms-rest-js";

async function main(): Promise<void> {
  try {
    // Please make sure you have logged in via Azure CLI `az login` before executing this script.
    const creds = await AzureCliCredentials.create();
    const client = new ServiceClient(creds);
    console.log(">>> Subscription associated with the access token: '%s'.",
      creds.tokenInfo.subscription);

    const request: RequestPrepareOptions = {
      url: getUrl(creds.subscriptionInfo.id),
      method: "GET"
    };
    console.log(">>> Request url: '%s'.", request.url);

    const res = await client.sendRequest(request);
    console.log("List of resource groups from subscriptionId '%s': \n%O",
      creds.subscriptionInfo.id, res.parsedBody);

    // Let us change the subscriptionId, which should trigger refreshing the access token.
    const subscriptions = await AzureCliCredentials.listAllSubscriptions();
    creds.subscriptionInfo = subscriptions[1];

    console.log(">>> The new subscription Id associated with the credential object is: '%s'.",
      creds.subscriptionInfo.id);
    request.url = getUrl(creds.subscriptionInfo.id);
    console.log(">>> Request url: '%s'.", request.url);

    const res2 = await client.sendRequest(request);
    console.log("List of resource groups from subscriptionId '%s': \n%O",
      creds.subscriptionInfo.id, res2.parsedBody);

    console.log(">>> Subscription associated with the access token: '%s'.",
      creds.tokenInfo.subscription);
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
  }
}

function getUrl(subscriptionId: string): string {
  return `https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/${subscriptionId}/resourcegroups?api-version=2018-05-01`;
}

main();

Authenticating with an existing token

If you have acquired a valid Azure Active Directory token from another source, you can use it to authenticate with Azure SDK libraries using the following code snippet:

const { HttpHeaders } = require("@azure/ms-rest-js");

function getCredentialForToken(accessToken) {
  return {
    signRequest: (request) => {
      if (!request.headers) request.headers = new HttpHeaders();
      request.headers.set("Authorization", `Bearer ${accessToken}`);
      return Promise.resolve(request);
    }
  };
}

const creds = getCredentialForToken("your existing token");

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [e-mail] with any additional questions or comments.