Microsoft Graph .NET Client Library Overview

The Microsoft Graph .NET Client Library is made up of 6 major components:

A client object
An authentication provider
An HTTP provider + serializer
Request builder objects
Request objects
Property bag object model classes for serialization and deserialization

The library is designed to be highly extensible. This overview covers basic scenarios but many of the individual components can be replaced with custom implementations.

GraphServiceClient

To begin making requests with the library, you will need to initialize a GraphServiceClient instance for building and sending requests.

GraphServiceClientConstructor

Parameter	Required?	Default Value
`IAuthenticationProvider` authenticationProvider	Yes	n/a

IAuthenticationProvider

The authentication provider is responsible for authenticating requests before sending them to the service. The Microsoft Graph .NET Client Library doesn't implement any authentication by default. Instead, you will need to retrieve access tokens for the service via the authentication library of your choice or by coding against one of the authentication endpoints directly. Please read here for more details about authenticating the Microsoft Graph service.

You can also read about authentication with Kiota generated clients here

Resource model

Microsoft Graph service resource are represented by property bag model classes of the same name in the client library. For example, the user resource is represented by the user class in the client library. Each of these model classes contain properties that represent the properties of the resources they represent.

These classes are used for serializing and deserializing the resources in requests to the service. They do not contain any logic to issue requests.

The resource model classes are generated based on the $metadata description of the service.

Requests

To make requests against the service, you'll need to build a request using the request builders of the client. The request builder patterns are intended to mirror the REST API pattern.

1. Request builders

You get the first request builder from the GraphServiceClient object. For example, to get a request builder for the /me navigation you call:

Task	SDK	URL
Get me	graphServiceClient.Me	GET graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me

The call will return a UserRequestBuilder object. From Me you can continue to chain the request builders.

The Microsoft Graph API documentation has more details about the full functionality of the API.

2. Request calls

To get /me/calendar you call:

var calendar = await graphServiceClient
    .Me
    .Calendar
    .GetAsync();

Any errors while building or sending a request will bubble up as an ApiException. See errors for more information on errors.

Query options

If you only want to retrieve certain properties of a resource you can select them. Here's how to get only the ID of the me object:

var user = await graphServiceClient
    .Me
    .GetAsync( requestConfiguration => requestConfiguration.QueryParameters.Select = new string[] { "id"});

All properties other than Id will be null on the returned user object.

Expand, Skip, Top, OrderBy, and Filter are also supported via the client library when supported by the Microsoft Graph service for the request type.

Collections

Please see collections for details on collections and paging.

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