Obtaining a valid access token for Microsoft Graph API

Question

I am working on an ASP.NET MVC5 Web App that uses Azure ADAL libraries to authenticate users, it works fine, however, when I manually send requests to graph, ex: GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me or GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups?$filter=from/displayName eq 'whatever'.

I have tried updating the App Registration in Azure as to add the required Graph permissions, and I have also tried creating new app registrations, no matter what I do my requests will always respond 401 Unauthorized, is there anything I am missing?

EDIT: Example response from Postman

{
  "error": {
    "code": "InvalidAuthenticationToken",
    "message": "Access token validation failure.",
    "innerError": {
      "request-id": "a142576b-acce-4e59-8a8d-adede61aaf59",
      "date": "2017-04-05T13:27:36"
    }
  }
}

EDIT: C# Request Example

public async Task<GroupGraph> GetGroupIdByDisplayName(string displayName)
{
    var accessToken = await authenticationService.GetTokenUserOnly();
    GroupGraph groupGraphResponse = null;
    using (var client = new HttpClient())
    {
        using (var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, $"https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/groups?$filter=from/displayName eq '{displayName}'"))
            {
                request.Headers.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", accessToken);
                using (var response = client.SendAsync(request).Result)
                {
                    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                    {
                        using (var content = response.Content)
                        {
                            var result = await content.ReadAsStringAsync();
                            groupGraphResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<GroupGraph>(result);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return groupGraphResponse;
    }

EDIT: The way I obtain the token

public async Task<string> GetTokenUserOnly()
    {
        string signedInUserID = ClaimsPrincipal.Current.FindFirst(ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier).Value;
        string tenantID = ClaimsPrincipal.Current.FindFirst("http://schemas.microsoft.com/identity/claims/tenantid").Value;
        string userObjectID = ClaimsPrincipal.Current.FindFirst("http://schemas.microsoft.com/identity/claims/objectidentifier").Value;

        // get a token for the Graph without triggering any user interaction (from the cache, via multi-resource refresh token, etc)
        ClientCredential clientcred = new ClientCredential(clientId, appKey);
        // initialize AuthenticationContext with the token cache of the currently signed in user, as kept in the app's database
        AuthenticationContext authenticationContext = new AuthenticationContext(aadInstance + tenantID, new TableTokenCache(signedInUserID));
        //AuthenticationResult authenticationResult = await authenticationContext.AcquireTokenSilentAsync(graphResourceID, clientcred, new UserIdentifier(userObjectID, UserIdentifierType.UniqueId));
        AuthenticationResult authenticationResult = authenticationContext.AcquireToken(graphResourceID, clientcred);
        return authenticationResult.AccessToken;
    }

Answer 1

You can't use ADAL to get tokens for graph.microsoft.com. ADAL is for graph.windows.net.

In order to get tokens for the Graph library (graph.windows.com) look into the Nuget Package Microsoft.Graph. Microsoft also has some documentation on how to pull user info using Graph.

Be forewarned though, using Graph Libraries and ADAL libraries side by side can lead to some weird side effects, such as the credential cache being cleared.

Answer 2

It seems you are using the client credential grant flow to acquire the access token for graph api(graphResourceID is https://graph.microsoft.com ?) :

  AuthenticationResult authenticationResult = authenticationContext.AcquireToken(graphResourceID, clientcred);

So you need to grant app permission in azure ad portal :

For error "Access token validation failure" , you could use online tool like http://jwt.calebb.net/ to decode your access token , check the audience or lifetime of the access token .