Persist Authentication in Web App with Power BI

Question

I have a web app that is using the Power BI Web API to display some dashboard data, inside another application. I have followed the authentication examples on GitHub, and can authenticate and query the API.

HOWEVER, all of the examples store the returned tokens in temporary storage (eg session), which means that the user has to re-authenticate the application every time they visit (or the app pool restarts).

Ideally, I want to authenticate the web app when it's set up (using a set of credentials set up just for the app), and then have the web app continue to use the same credentials, without the site users having to log back in to Power BI again (as many of the users of the web app do not have direct Power BI access).

Is this possible? If so, how might I go about it? All of the examples I can find are such that you have to re-authenticate every time you access the API. I suspect because I don't know the correct terminology here (this is my first time using the AAD services and authentication) I may be missing something obvious.

Answer 1

To do what you want, you need to securely store the refresh token. The call to get the initial token should return both the accessToken (that expires within 1hr usually) and a refreshToken that you can use to get new accessToken. The refreshToken is usually valid for 90 days, so your access is not indefinitely. There's documentation on MSDN for how to do that: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff752395.aspx