Register An Azure AD Application Programmatically Using C#

Usually, Azure SDK for .NET should provide the APIs to register an Azure AD application programmatically in C#. But as of February 2019, the facility is only available using PowerShell and not using C#. The C# APIs are under consideration or development. Hence, we will follow an approach of running a PowerShell script in the C# application to achieve our goal.

Prerequisites

Visual Studio 2017 (I am using the 2017 version; we can also use a lower version).
PowerShell v5.0 or higher version.
Azure Admin account

We can check the PowerShell version by running the below command on PowerShell.

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

There are 3 steps in this solution.

Create a C# application
Add NuGet packages to our project
Code to run PowerShell script in C#

Step 1 - Create a C# Application

Open Visual Studio as Administrator.
Create a console app (.NET Framework).
Enter AppRegistration in the name section and click OK.

Register An Azure AD Application Programmatically Using C#

Step 2 - Add NuGet packages to our project

Add a NuGet package called System.Management.Automation.dll created by the Microsoft Corporation. This package will allow us to run the PowerShell scripts from C# applications.

We also need to add the Newtonsoft.Json package created by James Newton-King which will allow us to convert PowerShell Objects into JSON Objects. We can not directly convert a PowerShell Object to C# Object; so we need to first convert it into JSON and then, we can convert it into C# Object.

Step 3 - C# code to run PowerShell commands

Add the reference namespaces in the import section of your Program.cs file.

using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces;
using System.Management.Automation;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

In Main method, write the below code.

string Username = “<User name of Azure account>”;
string Password = “<Password of Azure account>”;
string Appname = “<Name using which we want to register an Azure Application>”;
PowerShell powershell = PowerShell.Create();
Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace();
runspace.Open();
powershell.Runspace = runspace;
powershell.AddScript("Install-Module -Name AzureADPreview -Force; \n");
powershell.AddScript("Import-Module -Name AzureADPreview -Verbose \n");
powershell.AddScript("$username = \""+Username +"\"; \n" +
"$password = convertTo-securestring '"+ Password + "' -AsPlainText -Force; \n" +
"$cred = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $username, $password; \n" +
"Connect-AzureAD -Credential $cred; \n" +
"New-AzureADApplication -DisplayName '"+Appname+"' -ReplyUrls 'https://AppRegisterationDemo.contoso.com' -PublicClient $true");
try
{
var result = powershell.Invoke();
if (powershell.Streams.Error.Count > 0)
{
foreach (var err in powershell.Streams.Error.ToString())
{
Console.WriteLine(err);
}
return "0";
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine(result);
int i = 0;
foreach (var outputItem in result)
{
if (outputItem != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(outputItem.BaseObject.GetType());
var jsonData =
JsonConvert.SerializeObject(outputItem.Properties.ToDictionary(k => k.Name, v => v.Value), new JsonSerializerSettings()
{
PreserveReferencesHandling =
PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects,
Formatting = Formatting.Indented
});
if (i == 1)
{
var deseialized = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyInfo>(jsonData);
appID = deseialized.AppId;
ObjectId = deseialized.ObjectId;
Console.WriteLine(appID);
}
i++;
}
}
}
runspace.Close();
Console.WriteLine("App Created Successfully");
return "1";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
return "0";
}

We also need to add one class named MyInfo in which we will save the Object Id and Application Id.

public class MyInfo
{
public string AppId { get; set; }
public string ObjectId { get; set; }
}

After all these changes, our file will look like following.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces;
namespace AppRegistraion
{
public class MyInfo
{
public string AppId { get; set; }
public string ObjectId { get; set; }
}
class Program
{
public string appID = "";
public string ObjectId = "";
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string Username = “<User name of Azure account>”;
string Password = “<Password of Azure account>”;
string Appname = “<Name using which we want to register an Azure Application>”;
PowerShell powershell = PowerShell.Create();
Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace();
runspace.Open();
powershell.Runspace = runspace;
powershell.AddScript("Install-Module -Name AzureADPreview -Force; \n");
powershell.AddScript("Import-Module -Name AzureADPreview -Verbose \n");
powershell.AddScript("$username = \""+Username +"\"; \n" +
"$password = convertTo-securestring '"+ Password + "' -AsPlainText -Force; \n" +
"$cred = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $username, $password; \n" +
"Connect-AzureAD -Credential $cred; \n" +
"New-AzureADApplication -DisplayName '"+Appname+"' -ReplyUrls 'https://AppRegisterationDemo.contoso.com' -PublicClient $true");
try
{
var result = powershell.Invoke();
if (powershell.Streams.Error.Count > 0)
{
foreach (var err in powershell.Streams.Error.ToString())
{
Console.WriteLine(err);
}
return "0";
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine(result);
int i = 0;
foreach (var outputItem in result)
{
if (outputItem != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(outputItem.BaseObject.GetType());
var jsonData = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(outputItem.Properties.ToDictionary(k => k.Name, v => v.Value), new JsonSerializerSettings()
{
PreserveReferencesHandling = PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects,
Formatting = Formatting.Indented
});
if (i == 1)
{
var deseialized = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyInfo>(jsonData);
appID = deseialized.AppId;
ObjectId = deseialized.ObjectId;
Console.WriteLine(appID);
}
i++;
}
}
}
runspace.Close();
Console.WriteLine("App Created Successfully");
return "1";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
return "0";
}
}
}

Code Explanation

In the above code, first, we are creating PowerShell object and a runspace in which the PowerShell script will run.
In this runspace, we are adding scripts using the Addscript() method.
In PowerShell scripts, we are first installing AzureADPreview module and importing it to our runspace. Then, we are connecting to Azure AD using Connect-AzureAD command.
Using New-AzureADApplication command, we are creating an Azure AD application.
Now, we have invoked the commands to run using the Invoke() method of PowerShell object.
We need to check for errors if any using powershell.Streams.Error.
We want an Object ID and Application ID for the application we have created in Azure AD. To get both of these IDs, we have converted the PowerShell object into a JSON object and JSON object into a C# object using JsonConvert.SerializeObject method and JsonConvert.DeserializeObject() method respectively.

After this code, we can go to the Azure portal and in the Azure Active Directory - App Registrations, we can see the app we have registered using the C# code.

Summary

Thus, we can automate the application registration using C# code and PowerShell. In the next blog, we will see how to add and grant permissions programatically.