Note: With this library being a proof of concept, it is not recommended to be used for React Native applications intended for production.

MSAL for React Native is a proof of concept that allows React Native applications to authenticate users with Microsoft work and school accounts (AAD) as well as acquire access tokens from the Microsoft identity platform endpoint in order to access secured web APIs. Currently, this library is only available for the Android platform.

$ npm install @azuread/msal-react-native-android-poc

Under Authentication -> Platform configurations, click "Add a platform" and select Android. To generate the base64 signature of your application:

• MacOS: keytool -exportcert -alias androiddebugkey -keystore ~/.android/debug.keystore | openssl sha1 -binary | openssl base64
• Windows: keytool -exportcert -alias androiddebugkey -keystore %HOMEPATH%.android\debug.keystore | openssl sha1 -binary | openssl base64

For more information and help, refer to this MSAL FAQ.

Follow steps 1 through 3 in the Using MSAL section of MSAL for Android's README with these modifications/reminders:

• In step 2, please name the config file auth_config_single_account.json and put it in res/raw. You can pretty much copy and paste the MSAL configuration generated for you in Azure Portal and refer to the configuration file documentation.
• In step 3, remember that for android:path you want to paste the base64 signature hash you generated in the console and not the url encoded version.

Import MSAL for React Native as MSAL:

import MSAL from '@azuread/msal-react-native-android-poc';

Importing will automatically create a SingleAccountPublicClientApplication with the configurations provided in auth_config_single_account.json. All of the MSAL methods return a promise. You can use MSAL to sign in a user with scopes (a string of scopes separated by " "):

try {
    await MSAL.signIn(scopesValue);
} catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
}

Most of the methods return a map, and in the case of signIn, a map containing the variables of an IAccount object is returned. We can access the username of the currently signed in user and log it to console (for example):

try 
    const account = await MSAL.signIn(scopesValue);
    console.log("Username: " + account.username)
} catch (error) {
    console.log(error);
}

Since a user is now signed in, we can try to acquire an access token silently and make a call to Microsoft Graph API:

try {
    const result = await MSAL.acquireTokenSilent(scopesValue);
    //api call to MSGraph
    const response = await fetch (
        "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me", {
             method: 'GET',
             headers: {
                Authorization: `Bearer ${result.accessToken}`
             }
        }
    );
    
    ... //do something with response here
    
} catch (error) {
  console.log(error);
}

Please see msal-react-native-android-poc-sample in the sample folder for an example app that demonstrates the MSAL methods.

For a complete listing of each method's return value and map keys, see the Methods(link to Methods) section.

Because this library is a proof of concept, it is scoped to specific features and does not implement all the capabilities of an official MSAL for React Native library.

This proof of concept is scoped to consider:

• Compatibility with the Android platform
• Authenticating users with work and school Azure AD accounts (AAD)
• Single-account mode

This proof of concept does not implement:

• Compatibility with iOS
  • To allow compatibility with iOS, an Objective-C native module must be created that wraps the MSAL for iOS and macOS.
• B2C or ADFS
  • For implementing B2C, refer to the Microsoft docs on using MSAL for Android with B2C. Since the returned value from acquiring tokens is an IAuthenticationResult, the results of the wrapped B2C methods can be handled in the same manner as the existing AAD methods.
• Multiple-account mode
  • This could be as simple as adding an instance of MultipleAccountPublicClientApplication to the existing native module file and wrapping its corresponding methods.

This library's methods wrap MSAL for Android's corresponding singleAccountPublicClientApplication methods. All methods return a promise that, in most cases, resolves to a map and returns an exception if rejected. Please see the Microsoft Docs for singleAccountPublicClientApplication for more general information regarding MSAL methods.