Azure Key Vault Secret client library for Python

Azure Key Vault helps solve the following problems:

  • Secrets management (this library) - securely store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets

  • Cryptographic key management (azure-keyvault-keys) - create, store, and control access to the keys used to encrypt your data

  • Certificate management (azure-keyvault-certificates) - create, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates

Source code | Package (PyPI) | API reference documentation | Product documentation | Samples

Getting started

Install packages

Install azure-keyvault-secrets and azure-identity with pip:

pip install azure-keyvault-secrets azure-identity

azure-identity is used for Azure Active Directory authentication as demonstrated below.

Prerequisites

  • An Azure subscription

  • Python 2.7, 3.5.3, or later

  • A Key Vault. If you need to create one, you can use the Azure Cloud Shell to create one with these commands (replace "my-resource-group" and "my-key-vault" with your own, unique names):

    (Optional) if you want a new resource group to hold the Key Vault:

    az group create --name my-resource-group --location westus2

    Create the Key Vault:

    az keyvault create --resource-group my-resource-group --name my-key-vault

    Output:

    {
    "id": "...",
    "location": "westus2",
    "name": "my-key-vault",
    "properties": {
        "accessPolicies": [...],
        "createMode": null,
        "enablePurgeProtection": null,
        "enableSoftDelete": null,
        "enabledForDeployment": false,
        "enabledForDiskEncryption": null,
        "enabledForTemplateDeployment": null,
        "networkAcls": null,
        "provisioningState": "Succeeded",
        "sku": { "name": "standard" },
        "tenantId": "...",
        "vaultUri": "https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/"
    },
    "resourceGroup": "my-resource-group",
    "type": "Microsoft.KeyVault/vaults"
}

    The "vaultUri" property is the vault_url used by SecretClient

Authenticate the client

This document demonstrates using DefaultAzureCredential to authenticate as a service principal. However, SecretClient accepts any azure-identity credential. See the azure-identity documentation for more information about other credentials.

Create a service principal (optional)

This Azure Cloud Shell snippet shows how to create a new service principal. Before using it, replace “your-application-name” with a more appropriate name for your service principal.

Create a service principal:

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name http://my-application --skip-assignment

Output:

{
    "appId": "generated app id",
    "displayName": "my-application",
    "name": "http://my-application",
    "password": "random password",
    "tenant": "tenant id"
}

Use the output to set AZURE_CLIENT_ID (“appId” above), AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET (“password” above) and AZURE_TENANT_ID (“tenant” above) 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"

Authorize the service principal to perform key operations in your Key Vault:

az keyvault set-policy --name my-key-vault --spn $AZURE_CLIENT_ID --secret-permissions backup delete get list create update

Possible permissions:

  • Secret management: set, backup, delete, get, list, purge, recover, restore

Create a client

Once the AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET and AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variables are set, DefaultAzureCredential will be able to authenticate the SecretClient.

Constructing the client also requires your vault’s URL, which you can get from the Azure CLI or the Azure Portal. In the Azure Portal, this URL is the vault’s “DNS Name”.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)

Key concepts

Secret

A secret consists of a secret value and its associated metadata and management information. This library handles secret values as strings, but Azure Key Vault doesn’t store them as such. For more information about secrets and how Key Vault stores and manages them, see the Key Vault documentation.

SecretClient can set secret values in the vault, update secret metadata, and delete secrets, as shown in the examples below.

Examples

This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:

Set a Secret

set_secret creates new secrets and changes the values of existing secrets. If no secret with the given name exists, set_secret creates a new secret with that name and the given value. If the given name is in use, set_secret creates a new version of that secret, with the given value.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
secret = secret_client.set_secret("secret-name", "secret-value")

print(secret.name)
print(secret.value)
print(secret.properties.version)

Retrieve a Secret

get_secret retrieves a secret previously stored in the Key Vault.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
secret = secret_client.get_secret("secret-name")

print(secret.name)
print(secret.value)

Update Secret metadata

update_secret_properites updates a secret’s metadata. It cannot change the secret’s value; use set_secret to set a secret’s value.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)

# Clients may specify the content type of a secret to assist in interpreting the secret data when it's retrieved
content_type = "text/plain"

# We will also disable the secret for further use

updated_secret_properties = secret_client.update_secret_properties("secret-name", content_type=content_type, enabled=False)

print(updated_secret_properties.updated_on)
print(updated_secret_properties.content_type)
print(updated_secret_properties.enabled)

Delete a Secret

begin_delete_secret requests Key Vault delete a secret, returning a poller which allows you to wait for the deletion to finish. Waiting is helpful when the vault has soft-delete enabled, and you want to purge (permanently delete) the secret as soon as possible. When soft-delete is disabled, begin_delete_secret itself is permanent.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
deleted_secret = secret_client.begin_delete_secret("secret-name").result()

print(deleted_secret.name)
print(deleted_secret.deleted_date)

List secrets

list_properties_of_secrets lists the properties of all of the secrets in the client’s vault. This list doesn’t include the secret’s values.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
secret_properties = secret_client.list_properties_of_secrets()

for secret_property in secret_properties:
    # the list doesn't include values or versions of the secrets
    print(secret_property.name)

Async API

This library includes a complete async API supported on Python 3.5+. To use it, you must first install an async transport, such as aiohttp. See azure-core documentation for more information.

Asynchronously create a secret

set_secret creates a secret in the Key Vault with the specified optional arguments.

from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)

secret = await secret_client.set_secret("secret-name", "secret-value")

print(secret.name)
print(secret.value)
print(secret.properties.version)

Asynchronously list secrets

list_properties_of_secrets lists the properties of all of the secrets in the client’s vault.

from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
secret_properties = secret_client.list_properties_of_secrets()

async for secret_property in secret_properties:
    # the list doesn't include values or versions of the secrets
    print(secret_property.name)

Troubleshooting

General

Key Vault clients raise exceptions defined in azure-core. For example, if you try to get a key that doesn’t exist in the vault, SecretClient raises ResourceNotFoundError:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
from azure.core.exceptions import ResourceNotFoundError

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)

try:
    secret_client.get_secret("which-does-not-exist")
except ResourceNotFoundError as e:
    print(e.message)

Logging

This library uses the standard logging library for logging. Basic information about HTTP sessions (URLs, headers, etc.) is logged at INFO level.

Detailed DEBUG level logging, including request/response bodies and unredacted headers, can be enabled on a client with the logging_enable argument:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
import sys
import logging

# Create a logger for the 'azure' SDK
logger = logging.getLogger('azure')
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

# Configure a console output
handler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)
logger.addHandler(handler)

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

# This client will log detailed information about its HTTP sessions, at DEBUG level
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential, logging_enable=True)

Similarly, logging_enable can enable detailed logging for a single operation, even when it isn’t enabled for the client:

secret_client.get_secret("my-secret", logging_enable=True)

Next steps

Several samples are available in the Azure SDK for Python GitHub repository. These provide example code for additional Key Vault scenarios:

Additional Documentation

For more extensive documentation on Azure Key Vault, see the API reference documentation.

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.

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