why does my request hang when trying to get a user by email

Question

I am using Microsoft Graph API SDK to fetch a user from my AD B2C tenant like so:

public static GraphServiceClient GetGraphServiceClient()
{
    var clientapp = ConfidentialClientApplicationBuilder
        .Create(Globals.ClientId)
        .WithTenantId(Globals.TenantId)
        .WithClientSecret(Globals.ClientSecret)                
        .Build();

    ClientCredentialProvider authProvider = new ClientCredentialProvider(clientapp);

    return new GraphServiceClient(authProvider);
}

public static User GetADUserAsyncByEmail(string email)
{
    var graphClient = GetGraphServiceClient();
    var user = graphClient.Users[email].Request().GetAsync().Result;
    return user;
}

But my request just hangs? What am I doing wrong. I am able to use DeleteAsync() fine for example using the same mechanism.

Answer 1

This should work

public static async Task<User> GetADUserAsyncByEmail(string email)
{
    var graphClient = GetGraphServiceClient();
    var user = await graphClient.Users[email].Request().GetAsync();
    return user;
}

Answer 2

Your code is getting hang because your GetADUserAsyncByEmail does return the User and in order to return its user it is waiting fot the result of the asyncronous function graphClient.Users[email].Request().GetAsync() .

var user = await graphClient.Users[email].Request().GetAsync().Result; // Accesing to the Result you are waiting for the `async` completion

In order to avoid that function hang/block your thread, you should make it asyncronous.

Note: This code is similar to the await operator documentation

public static async Task<User> GetADUserAsyncByEmail(string email)
{
    var graphClient = GetGraphServiceClient();
    var user = await graphClient.Users[email].Request().GetAsync();
    return user;
}

So when you call it from your thread it is non-blocking until you want it (you really need its results)

Task<User> fetchingUser = GetADUserAsyncByEmail("jane.doe@gmail.com");
// Do other stuff until you need to access the `User` object
User jane = await fetchingUser; // If if was not already finished, it will wait/block until retrieved.
Console.WriteLine(jane.Address);