What is the exact difference between native app and web app in Azure Active Directory

Question

When we register an application in the Azure Active Directory for using graph api, I see there are two types of application Web application and Native application.

While creating web application there are two values requested 1. Sign-on URL and 2. App ID url. What is the use of these values ? Do we required real world url or just https://localhost:randomePort enough ?

On the other hand while creating Native application, I can see only one required value 'Redirect URL'.

I can obtain access token for web application using REST call

POST https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant-id>/oauth2/token  grant_type      client_credentials client_id       (the client ID of the calling service application in the AD) client secret   (the key configured in the calling service application in the AD) resource        https://graph.windows.net 

But how can I obtain access token for native app using such REST call ? because there is not client secret for native appliction

Coming to permissions, for the native app, I can see only delegated permissions option available while for web app I can see application permission as well as delegated permissions option.

One more thing, above REST call example authenticates application, How can I authenticate user using his credential using REST call ?

Answer 1

Native applications are public clients in OAuth2 parlance. Those apps are meant to run on a device and aren't trusted to maintain a secret - hence, their entry in the directory does not have the corresponding property. Without a secret, there is no way to assert the identity of the app - hence such apps cannot gain app level permissions and the portal UX reflects that. Conversely web apps are, again in OAuth2 parlance, confidential clients. They can get delegated tokens for their users, but they can also use client credentials to get tokens as themselves. Native apps can obtain tokens for the user via the OAuth2 authorization grant. You can find a complete overview of all supported topologies at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-authentication-scenarios/. Each scenario description point to more implementation oriented guidance.