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@azure/keyvault-secrets

Package version

Azure Key Vault Secret client library for JS

Azure Key Vault is a service that allows you to encrypt authentication keys, storage account keys, data encryption keys, .pfx files, and passwords by using keys that are protected by hardware security modules (HSMs). If you would like to know more about Azure Key Vault, you may want to review "What is Azure Key Vault?".

Azure Key Vault Secrets management allows you to securely store and tightly control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets.

Use the client library for Azure Key Vault Secrets in your Node.js application to

  • Get, set and delete a secret.
  • Update a secret and it's attributes.
  • Backup and restore a secret.
  • Get, purge or recover a deleted secret.
  • Get all the versions of a secret.
  • Get all secrets.
  • Get all deleted secrets.

Source code | Package (npm) | API Reference Documentation | Product documentation | Samples

Getting started

Prerequisites: You must have an Azure subscription and a Key Vault resource to use this package. If you are using this package in a Node.js application, then use Node.js 6.x or higher.

To quickly create the needed Key Vault resources in Azure and to receive a connection string for them, you can deploy our sample template by clicking:

Install the package

Install the Azure Key Vault Secret client library using npm:

npm install @azure/keyvault-secrets

Install the identity library

Key Vault clients authenticate using the Azure Identity Library. Install it as well using npm

npm install @azure/identity

Configure TypeScript

TypeScript users need to have Node type definitions installed:

npm install @types/node

You also need to enable compilerOptions.allowSyntheticDefaultImports in your tsconfig.json. Note that if you have enabled compilerOptions.esModuleInterop, allowSyntheticDefaultImports is enabled by default. See TypeScript's compiler options handbook for more information.

Configuring your Key Vault

Use the Azure Cloud Shell snippet below to create/get client secret credentials.

  • Create a service principal and configure its access to Azure resources:

    az ad sp create-for-rbac -n <your-application-name> --skip-assignment

    Output:

    {
  "appId": "generated-app-ID",
  "displayName": "dummy-app-name",
  "name": "http://dummy-app-name",
  "password": "random-password",
  "tenant": "tenant-ID"
}

  • Use the above returned credentials information to set AZURE_CLIENT_ID(appId), AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET(password) and AZURE_TENANT_ID(tenant) environment variables. The following example shows a way to do this in Bash:

      export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="generated-app-ID"
  export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="random-password"
  export AZURE_TENANT_ID="tenant-ID"

  • Grant the above mentioned application authorization to perform secret operations on the keyvault:

    az keyvault set-policy --name <your-key-vault-name> --spn $AZURE_CLIENT_ID --secret-permissions backup delete get list purge recover restore set

    --secret-permissions: Accepted values: backup, delete, get, list, purge, recover, restore, set

  • Use the above mentioned Key Vault name to retrieve details of your Vault which also contains your Key Vault URL:

    az keyvault show --name <your-key-vault-name>

Key concepts
  • The Secret client is the primary interface to interact with the API methods related to secrets in the Azure Key Vault API from a JavaScript application. Once initialized, it provides a basic set of methods that can be used to create, read, update and delete secrets.
  • A Secret version is a version of a secret in the Key Vault. Each time a user assigns a value to a unique secret name, a new version of that secret is created. Retrieving a secret by a name will always return the latest value assigned, unless a specific version is provided to the query.
  • Soft delete allows Key Vaults to support deletion and purging as two separate steps, so deleted secrets are not immediately lost. This only happens if the Key Vault has soft-delete enabled.
  • A Secret backup can be generated from any created secret. These backups come as binary data, and can only be used to regenerate a previously deleted secret.

Authenticating with Azure Active Directory

The Key Vault service relies on Azure Active Directory to authenticate requests to its APIs. The @azure/identity package provides a variety of credential types that your application can use to do this. The README for @azure/identity provides more details and samples to get you started.

Here's a quick example. First, import DefaultAzureCredential and SecretClient:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

Once these are imported, we can next connect to the Key Vault service. To do this, we'll need to copy some settings from the Key Vault we are connecting to into our environment variables. Once they are in our environment, we can access them with the following code:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

// DefaultAzureCredential expects the following three environment variables:
// * AZURE_TENANT_ID: The tenant ID in Azure Active Directory
// * AZURE_CLIENT_ID: The application (client) ID registered in the AAD tenant
// * AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET: The client secret for the registered application
const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

// Build the URL to reach your key vault
const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

// Lastly, create our secrets client and connect to the service
const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

Examples

The following sections provide code snippets that cover some of the common tasks using Azure Key Vault Secrets. The scenarios that are covered here consist of:

Creating and setting a secret

setSecret assigns a provided value to the specified secret name. If a secret with the same name already exists, then a new version of the secret is created.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const result = await client.setSecret(secretName, "MySecretValue");
  console.log("result: ", result);
}

main();

Getting a secret

The simplest way to read secrets back from the vault is to get a secret by name. This will retrieve the most recent version of the secret. You can optionally get a different version of the key if you specify it as part of the optional parameters.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const latestSecret = await client.getSecret(secretName);
  console.log(`Latest version of the secret ${secretName}: `, latestSecret);
  const specificSecret = await client.getSecret(secretName, { version: latestSecret.version! });
  console.log(`The secret ${secretName} at the version ${latestSecret.version!}: `, specificSecret);
}

main();

Creating and updating secrets with attributes

A secret can have more information than its name and its value. They can also include the following attributes:

  • tags: Any set of key-values that can be used to search and filter secrets.
  • contentType: Any string that can be used to help the receiver of the secret understand how to use the secret value.
  • enabled: A boolean value that determines whether the secret value can be read or not.
  • notBefore: A given date after which the secret value can be retrieved.
  • expires: A given date after which the secret value cannot be retrieved.

An object with these attributes can be sent as the third parameter of setSecret, right after the secret's name and value, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const result = await client.setSecret(secretName, "MySecretValue", {
    enabled: false
  });
}

main();

This will create a new version of the same secret, which will have the latest provided attributes.

Attributes can also be updated to an existing secret version with updateSecretAttributes, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const result = client.getSecret(secretName);
  await client.updateSecretAttributes(secretName, result.parameters.version, { enabled: false });
}

main();

Deleting a secret

The beginDeleteSecret method starts the deletion of a Secret. This process will happen in the background as soon as the necessary resources are available.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  await client.beginDeleteSecret(secretName);
}

main();

If soft-delete is enabled for the Key Vault, this operation will only label the secret as a deleted secret. A deleted secret can't be updated. They can only be either read, recovered or purged.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const poller = await client.beginDeleteSecret(secretName)

  // You can use the deleted secret immediately:
  const deletedSecret = poller.getResult();

  // The secret is being deleted. Only wait for it if you want to restore it or purge it.
  await poller.pollUntilDone();

  // You can also get the deleted secret this way:
  await client.getDeletedSecret(secretName);

  // Deleted secrets can also be recovered or purged.

  // recoverDeletedSecret returns a poller, just like beginDeleteSecret.
  const recoverPoller = await client.beginRecoverDeletedSecret(secretName);
  const recoverPoller.pollUntilDone();

  // And then, to purge the deleted secret:
  await client.purgeDeletedSecret(secretName);
}

main();

Since Secrets take some time to get fully deleted, beginDeleteSecret returns a Poller object that keeps track of the underlying Long Running Operation according to our guidelines: https://azure.github.io/azure-sdk/typescript_design.html#ts-lro

The received poller will allow you to get the deleted secret by calling to poller.getResult(). You can also wait until the deletion finishes, either by running individual service calls until the secret is deleted, or by waiting until the process is done:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  const poller = await client.beginDeleteSecret(certificateName, certificatePolicy);

  // You can use the deleted secret immediately:
  let deletedSecret = poller.getResult();

  await poller.poll(); // On each poll, the poller checks whether the secret has been deleted or not.
  console.log(poller.isDone()) // The poller will be done once the secret is fully deleted.

  // Alternatively, you can keep polling automatically until the operation finishes with pollUntilDone:
  deletedSecret = await poller.pollUntilDone();
  console.log(deletedSecret);
}

main();

Iterating lists of secrets

Using the SecretClient, you can retrieve and iterate through all of the secrets in a Key Vault, as well as through all of the deleted secrets and the versions of a specific secret. The following API methods are available:

  • listPropertiesOfSecrets will list all of your non-deleted secrets by their names, only at their latest versions.
  • listDeletedSecrets will list all of your deleted secrets by their names, only at their latest versions.
  • listPropertiesOfSecretVersions will list all the versions of a secret based on a secret name.

Which can be used as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  for await (let secretProperties of client.listPropertiesOfSecrets()) {
    console.log("Secret properties: ", secretProperties);
  }
  for await (let deletedSecret of client.listDeletedSecrets()) {
    console.log("Deleted secret: ", deletedSecret);
  }
  for await (let versionProperties of client.listPropertiesOfSecretVersions(secretName)) {
    console.log("Version properties: ", versionProperties);
  }
}

main();

All of these methods will return all of the available results at once. To retrieve them by pages, add .byPage() right after invoking the API method you want to use, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { SecretClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-secrets");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new SecretClient(url, credential);

const secretName = "MySecretName";

async function main() {
  for await (let page of client.listPropertiesOfSecrets().byPage()) {
    for (let secretProperties of page) {
      console.log("Secret properties: ", secretProperties);
    }
  }
  for await (let page of client.listDeletedSecrets().byPage()) {
    for (let deletedSecret of page) {
      console.log("Deleted secret: ", deletedSecret);
    }
  }
  for await (let page of client.listPropertiesOfSecretVersions(secretName).byPage()) {
    for (let versionProperties of page) {
      console.log("Version properties: ", versionProperties);
    }
  }
}

main();

Troubleshooting

Enable logs

You can set the following environment variable to get the debug logs when using this library.

  • Getting debug logs from the Key Vault Secrets SDK
export DEBUG=azure*

Next steps

Please take a look at the samples directory for detailed examples on how to use this library.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Testing

To run our tests, first install the dependencies (with npm install or rush install), then run the unit tests with: npm run unit-test. Our unit tests that target the behavior of our library against remotely available endpoints are executed using previously recorded HTTP request and responses.

Our integration tests will run against the live resources, which are determined by the environment variables you provide. To run the integration tests, you can run npm run integration-test, but make sure to provide the following environment variables:

  • AZURE_CLIENT_ID: The Client ID of your Azure account.
  • AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET: The secret of your Azure account.
  • AZURE_TENANT_ID: The Tenant ID of your Azure account.
  • KEYVAULT_NAME: The name of the Key Vault you want to run the tests against.

WARNING: Integration tests will wipe all of the existing records in the targeted Key Vault.

Impressions

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