An Office 365 API sample app using Node, Express and Ejs

This simple Office 365 API sample app demonstrates how to program Office 365 REST API in a Web application using Nodejs, Expressjs and Ejs. It is meant to provide a quick introduction, by way of a few tested examples, to getting started to explore
Office 365 API features in an Express-based web application. Specifically, it covers how to

• sign in to a user's Office 365 account, using the passport-azure-oauth module,
• discover available Office 365 API services,
• get mail messages from the user's inbox, using the request module,
• view a specific mail message,
• delete a specific mail message,
• send a new mail message to a specified recipient,
• reply a mail with comments,
• get the user's calendar events,
• get the user's contacts,
• inspect the user's files drive on OneDrive for Business,
• get the SharePoint site lists of Office 365
• create, update, read and delete an Office 365 SharePoint list and
• make the app work.

As a sample app to show programming of Office 365 APIs, I made no attempts on elaborate programming patterns or error handlings.That doesn't mean you should follow my example.

For more information about Office 365 REST API, see the API Docs.

## Make the app work

• To run the app in Visual Studio, hit F5.

• To run the app in node shell, go to the app's bin directory and type node www to start the server. Then open a browser and enter "http://localhost:1337" in the address bar, assuming the default setting is preserved.

• If you have not done so, install node.js to your working machine.

• To launch the app from the Visual Studio project, you must have the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio installed.

• Configure the app in your Azure Active Directory (AAD) subscription. For more information on how to do this in general, see the setup insturctions listed in Office 365 APIs Starter project for Android.

• When granting the app permissions to other applications, make sure that no redudant permissions are selected. For example, do not select both Read users' mail and Read and write access to users' mail for Office 365 Exchange Online because the former is made redundant by the latter. Otherwise, you may get 403 error when trying to access the email service from the app.

• The SIGN-ON URL value in AAD must match that assigned for the nodejs app. for example if the node app is assigned an URL of http://localhost:1337, the AAD SIGN-ON URL must have the same value.

• To receive the Azure authentication/authoization results via passport-azure-oauth module, the corresponding Express route must have its path match the path of REPLY URL in AAD. For example, if the REPLY URL value is http://localhost:1337/auth/azureOAuth/callback, the app must enact a routing rule of the app.get('/auth/azureOAuth/callback', callback) format.

• To ensure all the node modules are included in the project, run the npm install command under the app's main directory, where the package.json file is located, from a shell window.

  If using Visual Studio, right click the npm node in the Solution Explorer to select Install Missing npm Packages before running the app.

## Sign in to Office 365 This demo uses the [_passport-azure-oauth_](https://www.npmjs.com/package/passport-azure-oauth) module for a user to sign in to his or her Office 365 account. For this to work, make sure that you have configured the _oauthOptions_, in the _appSettings.js_ file under the _/models_ sub directory of this application, to match the corresponding app settings you configured in the Azure Active Directory subscription. For more information, see [Set up your Office 365 development environment](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/setup-development-environment)

To sign in, a user selects the option on the app's home page to start a login request (app.get('/login', ...)), which is then rerouted to the passport-azure-oauth module to take the user through the Azure Active Directory user authentication process (app.get('/auth/azureOAuth', ...)). Here, the user is asked to enter his or her Office 365 user credentials. Once the user is authenticated with permissions to use the app, the passport-azure-oauth module returns initial access token, refresh token and other related information through the application's redirect_uri, which is set to be http://localhost:1337/auth/azureOAuth/callback in this app. To receive the results, the app supplies a callback function in the Express route of app.get('/auth/azureOAuth/callback', callback). Notice that this Express route will work if a different host name and port are configured for the app. For details of an implementation, see the index.js file in the app's routes directory.

The app caches the returned access token for use in subsequent HTTPS requests to access any Office 365 API functioinality. If the access token is expired, it can be refreshed using the refresh token, provided that the refresh token remains valid. Otherwise, the app will need to go through the sign-in process again.

## Discover Office 365 API services available for the user's

This shows how to perform dicovery of the Office 365 API services availble for the signed-in user.

## Get mail messages from the user's Inbox

To get mail messages from the signed-in user's Inbox, the app uses the request module to submit a GET request on the Office 365 MAIL API resource as identified by this Url, https://outlook.office365.com/api/v1.0/me/messages. The access token must be specified as a bearer ticket in the request's Authorization header.

For this operation to work, the app must have been granted the Mail.Read scope. In this app, all the Mail API REST calls are implmented in the mail.js file in the routes sub-directory.

The result contains a list of mail messages in JSON format.

The HTTPS requests of Office 365 API resources are constitute client requests in a node.js app. They can be implemented in many different ways than that used in this app.

## View a specific mail message

Viewing a specific mail message involves a GET request against a Url of the https://outlook.office365.com/api/v1.0/me/messages/{message-id} format, where {message-id} is a string value of the interested message Id. You must also supply a valid access token as part of the request.

## Delete a specific mail message

Deleting a message involves submitting a DELETE request against a specific mail message.

The app must have Mail.Write permission to delete a mail message.

## Send a new mail message to a specific recipient

Sending a new mail message is done by submitting a POST request on the sendmail resource, as identified by the https://outlook.office365.com/api/v1.0/me/sendmail Url. The request body contains the message specification, including the subject, message content, recipients and other related properties, in the JSON format.

For this to work, the app must have the Mail.Send scope.

## Reply a mail message with comments To reply a mail message sends a POST request on the `reply` resource. The app supplies to request body the comments that is to be added to the original message. ## Get the user's calendar events

This involves a GET request against the calendar events resource (https://outlook.office365.com/api/v1.0/me/calendar/events). The app must have the Calendar.Read or Calendar.Write permission.

## Get the user's contacts

This involves a GET request against the calendar events resource (https://outlook.office365.com/api/v1.0/me/contacts). The app must have the Contacts.Read or Contacts.Write permission.

## Get the user's files on OneDrive for Business

This involves a GET request against the OneDrive for Business drive resource (https://{tenant}-my.sharepoint.com/_api/v1.0/me/drive). For an Office 365 developer site with the domain name of contoso.onmicrosoft.com, the {tenant} value is contoso. The app must have appropriate permissions to the Office 365 SharePoint Online service as configured in Azure Active Directory.

Notice that you may need to specify secureProtocol: 'TLSv1_method' as an additional option to the request if you get the tunneling socket could not be established, cause=connect ECONNREFUSED or a similar one (e.g., ECONNRESET) error.

## Work with Office 365 SharePoint site lits

This involves a HTTP GET request against the SharePoint site lists resource (https://{tenant}.sharepoint.com/_api/web/lists). For an Office 365 developer site with the domain name of contoso.onmicrosoft.com, the {tenant} value is contoso. The app must have appropriate permissions to the Office 365 SharePoint Online service as configured in Azure Active Directory.

To create a list, use HTTP POST against the lists resource. To update or delete a list, use the HTTP POST request against the URI of the list, specifying the "X-HTTP-METHOD":"MERGE" or "X-HTTP-METHOD":"DELETE" as a request header.

Notice that you may need to specify secureProtocol: 'TLSv1_method' as an additional option to the request if you get the tunneling socket could not be established, cause=connect ECONNREFUSED or a similar one (e.g., ECONNRESET) error. You must aslo add accept : 'application/json' in the options settings if you expect to receive the response in JSON. Otherwise, you will get an XML payload.

Copyright

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