Sample Power BI Push Dataset

This a sample code for using Power BI Rest API to implement Power BI push datasets feature through Service Principal authentication method.

Background for using Power BI Rest API

In order to access Power BI Rest API, we need these steps:

1 Choose Embed Solution and authentication method.

Here we use Embed for your customers solution and Service principal method to authenticate our application.

Embed for your customers

The Embed for your customers solution is that you're planning to create an application that's designed for your customers, because the data will be provide by application for customer, it also called app owns data solution.

Users will not need to sign in to Power BI or have a Power BI license, to use your application. Therefore, your application could use one of the following methods to authenticate against Power BI:

• Master user account (a Power BI Pro license used for signing in to Power BI)
• Service principal

The embed for your customers solution is usually used by independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers who are creating applications for a third party.

Embed for your organization

The Embed for your organization solution is that you're planning to create an application that requires users to use their credentials to authenticate against Power BI. because the data will be provide by user, it also called user owns data solution.

The embed for your organization solution is usually used by enterprises and big organizations, and is intended for internal users.

2 Register an Azure AD application (Manual registration)

In order to use Service principal, we need use the Azure AD manual app registration:

1. Log into Microsoft Azure and search for App registrations (應用程式註冊) and click it.
2. Click New registration.

3. Fill in the required information and click Register.

• Name - Enter a name for your application
• Supported account types - Select supported account types
• (Optional) Redirect URI - Enter a URI if needed

4.After registering, the Application ID is available from the Overview tab. Copy and save the Application ID & Tenant ID for later use.

5.Click the Certificates & secrets tab and click New client secret

6.In the Add a client secret window, enter a description, specify when you want the client secret to expire (Here Choose Never), and click Add.

7.Copy and save the Client secret value.

3 Create an Azure AD security group

Now, service principal doesn't have access to any of your Power BI content and APIs. To give the service principal access, we need to create a security group in Azure AD, and add the service principal you created to that security group.

1.On the Active Directory page, select Groups and then select New group.

2.The New Group pane will appear and you must fill out the required information. Select the group type Security Group and type Group Name, then select our Application created just now to be the member.

4. Enable the Power BI service admin settings

For an Azure AD app to be able to access the Power BI content and APIs, a Power BI admin needs to enable service principal access in the Power BI admin portal.

Add the security group you created in Azure AD, to the specific security group section in the Developer settings.

5. Add the service principal to your workspace

To enable your Azure AD app access artifacts such as reports, dashboards and datasets in the Power BI service, add the service principal entity, or the security group that includes your service principal, as a member or admin to your workspace.

1.Scroll to the workspace you want to enable access for, and from the More menu, select Workspace access.

2.In the Access pane, text box, add one of the following: - Your service principal. The name of your service principal is the Display name of your Azure AD app, as it appears in your Azure AD app's overview tab. - The security group that includes your service principal.

From the drop-down menu, select Member or Admin.

3. Select Add.

Finish!

2. Get an authentication access token (Could ignore if use the sample project)

Now, we could use the Application ID, Client secret value & Tenant ID to authenticate and get access Token for accessing Power BI Rest API.

In this step, we could use the Application ID, Client secret value & Tenant ID before previous step we got, to get an authentication access token.

Because Power BI apps are integrated with Azure Active Directory to provide your app with secure sign in and authorization. Your app need to uses a token to authenticate to Azure AD and gain access to Power BI resources.

In order to use the Application ID, Client secret value & Tenant ID to authenticate, we could install adal-node package which is a node.js library for node.js applications to authenticate to Azure AD in order to access Azure AD protected web resources.

$ yarn add adal-node

And here is the sample code.

import { AuthenticationContext, TokenResponse, ErrorResponse } from "adal-node";

export const getAuthToken = async ({
  clientId,
  clientSecret,
  tenantId,
}: {
  clientId: string;
  clientSecret: string;
  tenantId: string;
}) => {
  return new Promise<TokenResponse | ErrorResponse>((resolve, reject) => {
    // login url
    const authorityUri = `https://login.microsoftonline.com/${tenantId}/`;
    const scope = "https://analysis.windows.net/powerbi/api";

    const authContext = new AuthenticationContext(authorityUri);
    authContext.acquireTokenWithClientCredentials(
      scope,
      clientId,
      clientSecret,
      (err, response) => {
        // Function returns error object in tokenResponse
        // Invalid Username will return empty tokenResponse, thus err is used
        if (err) {
          reject(response == null ? err : response);
        }
        resolve(response);
      }
    );
  });
};

...

app.get("/getAccessToken", async ctx => {
    const tokenInfo = await getAuthToken({
      clientId: "your Application Id",
      clientSecret: "your Application Secret Value",
      tenantId: "your Tenant Id",
    })

    const accessToken = tokenInfo.accessToken;

    // Next Step, access Power BI API....
});

3. Setup the project's config.json file

But the Sample Power BI Push Dataset project has completed the flow of getting access token, so you just need to clone the project and type Application ID, Client secret value & Tenant ID to the src/config.json and skip previous step Get an authentication access token:

{
    "appClientId": "Type Application ID...",
    "appClientSecret": "Type Client secret...",
    "appTenantId": "Type Tenant ID...",
    "groupId": "Type your group workspace Id"
}

You could check the group workspace Id from your group workspace URL link:

It's would be a UUID string

After finish setting, then run the server.

Environment Startup

Please clone the project and type the command to install needed package and run server, the node version which project used is v10.23.0 and record in th .nvmrc.

$ yarn install
$ yarn run dev # run server