Accessing user information in Azure Static Web Apps

Client principal data is passed to API functions in the x-ms-client-principal request header. The client principal data is sent as a Base64-encoded string containing a serialized JSON object.

The following example function shows how to read and return user information.

module.exports = async function (context, req) {
  const header = req.headers.get('x-ms-client-principal');
  const encoded = Buffer.from(header, 'base64');
  const decoded = encoded.toString('ascii');

  context.res = {
    body: {
      clientPrincipal: JSON.parse(decoded),
    },
  };
};

Assuming the above function is named user, you can use the fetch¹ browser API to access the API's response using the following syntax.

async function getUser() {
  const response = await fetch('/api/user');
  const payload = await response.json();
  const { clientPrincipal } = payload;
  return clientPrincipal;
}

console.log(await getUser());

In a C# function, the user information is available from the x-ms-client-principal header which your app can deserialize into a ClaimsPrincipal object, or your own custom type. The following code demonstrates how to unpack the header into an intermediary type, ClientPrincipal, which is then turned into a ClaimsPrincipal instance.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Security.Claims;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.Json;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;

public static class StaticWebAppsAuth
{
  private class ClientPrincipal
  {
      public string IdentityProvider { get; set; }
      public string UserId { get; set; }
      public string UserDetails { get; set; }
      public IEnumerable<string> UserRoles { get; set; }
  }

  public static ClaimsPrincipal Parse(HttpRequest req)
  {
      var principal = new ClientPrincipal();

      if (req.Headers.TryGetValue("x-ms-client-principal", out var header))
      {
          var data = header[0];
          var decoded = Convert.FromBase64String(data);
          var json = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decoded);
          principal = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<ClientPrincipal>(json, new JsonSerializerOptions { PropertyNameCaseInsensitive = true });
      }

      principal.UserRoles = principal.UserRoles?.Except(new string[] { "anonymous" }, StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);

      if (!principal.UserRoles?.Any() ?? true)
      {
          return new ClaimsPrincipal();
      }

      var identity = new ClaimsIdentity(principal.IdentityProvider);
      identity.AddClaim(new Claim(ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier, principal.UserId));
      identity.AddClaim(new Claim(ClaimTypes.Name, principal.UserDetails));
      identity.AddClaims(principal.UserRoles.Select(r => new Claim(ClaimTypes.Role, r)));

      return new ClaimsPrincipal(identity);
  }
}