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A simple way to get an access token for working with Azure REST API from PowerShell

· 2 min read

This post is sort of a follow up on a previous post where I attempted to prevent a duplicate login when accessing both Azure Resource Manager and Azure AD in the same PowerShell script, still without success by the way. But I can use something I learned there to accomplish something else: getting an access token for working with the Azure REST API.

Getting the access token

Getting the access token follows the same steps as described in my earlier post:

$rmAccount = Add-AzureRmAccount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId
$tenantId = (Get-AzureRmSubscription -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId).TenantId
$tokenCache = $rmAccount.Context.TokenCache
$cachedTokens = $tokenCache.ReadItems() `
| where { $_.TenantId -eq $tenantId } `
| Sort-Object -Property ExpiresOn -Descending
$accessToken = cachedTokens[0].AccessToken

Of course, you have to login using an account that has sufficient permissions to access the REST API.

Using the token

We can now use the token to call the REST API. For example, to retrieve all the resource groups in a subscription. The easiest way is via the Invoke-RestMethod PowerShell cmdlet:

$apiVersion = "2017-05-10"
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get `
-Uri ("https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/" + $subscriptionId +
"/resourcegroups" +
"?api-version=" + $apiVersion) `
-Headers @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer " + $accessToken }