New version of Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory (ADAL.NET) is out

This post was most recently updated on November 30th, 2022.

2 min read.

There’s now a new version of the assembly Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory available – plenty of reasons to update right away! Let me offer you one hot take on the matter since the earlier 3.x -versions of the package had some issues.

Why bother updating?

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In an earlier post, I described an issue I had with Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory.Platform not getting copied during the build in a referencing project. In 3.17.0, which the developers published this month, they fixed the issue! The new package actually contains separate DLLs for different platforms.

In essence, this means, that from C#/.NET -developer’s standing point, the team has assimilated the Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory.Platform assembly, among other platform DLLs, into Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory package itself. Hence, you’ll need no more funky hacks to ensure, that Visual Studio will end up copying the DLLs during the build! :)

What’s new with Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory 3.17?

Release notes say, that 3.17 introduces these changes:

Write more efficient applications, tolerant to Azure AD throttling.
Force end users of your apps to choose an identity even when s/he are logged-in.
Process more effective conditional access.

While looking at the DLLs through Object Browser, it seems like they’ve added a new namespace “Native”, which seems like it’s more or less moved from the Playtform dll. In essence, that namespace likely now contains the functionality that was in Platform dll before.. Therefore, you should not need the Platform dll anymore!

Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory DLL in Visual Studio Object Browser

Disclaimer: I’ve got nothing to do with the development team. I’m just happy the team was able to push this update out – so I thought I should maybe give them some appreciation for their work. Good job, folks! :)

To find out more, check this: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/adal-net-3-17-0-released-2/

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Antti K. Koskela

Developer / Speaker / Consultant at Koskila / Precio Fishbone / Norppandalotti Software Co / Alter - Experience Ideas Ltd

Antti Koskela is a proud digital native nomadic millennial full stack developer (is that enough funny buzzwords? That's definitely enough funny buzzwords!), who works as Solutions Architect for Precio Fishbone, building delightful Digital Workplaces.

He's been a developer from 2004 (starting with PHP and Java), and he's been working on .NET projects, Azure, Office 365, SharePoint and a lot of other stuff. He's also Microsoft MVP for Azure.

This is his personal professional (e.g. professional, but definitely personal) blog.

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