Azure Key Vault Secrets 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
• Vault administration (azure-keyvault-administration) - role-based access control (RBAC), and vault-level backup and restore options

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

Disclaimer

Azure SDK Python packages support for Python 2.7 has ended 01 January 2022. For more information and questions, please refer to https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/20691

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 3.6 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 get set list delete backup recover restore purge

Possible permissions:

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

If you have enabled role-based access control (RBAC) for Key Vault instead, you can find roles like "Key Vault Secrets Officer" in our RBAC guide.

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
• Retrieve a Secret
• Update Secret metadata
• Delete a Secret
• List Secrets
• Asynchronously create a Secret
• Asynchronously list Secrets

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_properties 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 set of async APIs. To use them, you must first install an async transport, such as aiohttp. See azure-core documentation for more information.

Async clients and credentials should be closed when they're no longer needed. These objects are async context managers and define async close methods. For example:

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

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

# call close when the client and credential are no longer needed
client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
...
await client.close()
await credential.close()

# alternatively, use them as async context managers (contextlib.AsyncExitStack can help)
client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
async with client:
  async with credential:
    ...

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

See the azure-keyvault-secrets troubleshooting guide for details on how to diagnose various failure scenarios.

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:

• hello_world.py and hello_world_async.py - create/get/update/delete secrets
• list_operations.py and list_operations_async.py - basic list operations for secrets
• backup_restore_operations.py and backup_restore_operations_async.py - backup and restore secrets
• recover_purge_operations.py and recover_purge_operations_async.py - recovering and purging secrets

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.

Release History

4.5.0b1 (2022-06-07)

Bugs Fixed

• Port numbers are now preserved in the vault_url property of a KeyVaultSecretIdentifier (#24446)

4.4.0 (2022-03-28)

Features Added

• Key Vault API version 7.3 is now the default
• Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using azure-identity 1.8.0 or newer (#20698)
• (From 4.4.0b3) Added managed property to SecretProperties

Other Changes

• (From 4.4.0b3) Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.20.0
• (From 4.4.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication, get_token calls during challenge authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument (#20698). See https://aka.ms/azsdk/python/identity/tokencredential for more details on how to integrate this parameter if get_token is implemented by a custom credential.

4.4.0b3 (2022-02-08)

Features Added

• Added managed property to SecretProperties

Other Changes

• Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
• (From 4.4.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication, get_token calls during challenge authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument (#20698)

4.4.0b2 (2021-11-11)

Features Added

• Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using azure-identity 1.7.1 or newer (#20698)

Other Changes

• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.15.0

4.4.0b1 (2021-09-09)

Features Added

• Key Vault API version 7.3-preview is now the default

Other Changes

• Updated type hints to fix mypy errors (#19158)

4.3.0 (2021-06-22)

This is the last version to support Python 3.5. The next version will require Python 2.7 or 3.6+.

Fixed

• Correct typing for async paging methods

Changed

• Key Vault API version 7.2 is now the default
• Updated minimum msrest version to 0.6.21

Added

• Added class KeyVaultSecretIdentifier that parses out a full ID returned by Key Vault, so users can easily access the secret's name, vault_url, and version.

4.2.0 (2020-08-11)

Fixed

• Values of x-ms-keyvault-region and x-ms-keyvault-service-version headers are no longer redacted in logging output

Changed

• Key Vault API version 7.1 is now the default
• Updated minimum azure-core version to 1.7.0

Added

• At construction, clients accept a CustomHookPolicy through the optional keyword argument custom_hook_policy
• All client requests include a unique ID in the header x-ms-client-request-id
• Dependency on azure-common for multiapi support

4.2.0b1 (2020-03-10)

• Support for Key Vault API version 7.1-preview (#10124)
  • Added recoverable_days to CertificateProperties
  • Added ApiVersion enum identifying Key Vault versions supported by this package

4.1.0 (2020-03-10)

• SecretClient instances have a close method which closes opened sockets. Used as a context manager, a SecretClient closes opened sockets on exit. (#9906)
• Pollers no longer sleep after operation completion (#9991)

4.0.1 (2020-02-11)

• azure.keyvault.secrets defines __version__
• Challenge authentication policy preserves request options (#8999)
• Updated msrest requirement to >=0.6.0
• Challenge authentication policy requires TLS (#9457)
• Methods no longer raise the internal error KeyVaultErrorException (#9690)

4.0.0 (2019-10-31)

Breaking changes:

• Moved optional parameters of two methods into kwargs ( docs detail the new keyword arguments):
  • set_secret now has positional parameters name and value
  • update_secret_properties now has positional parameters name and (optional) version
• Renamed list_secrets to list_properties_of_secrets
• Renamed list_secret_versions to list_properties_of_secret_versions
• Renamed sync method delete_secret to begin_delete_secret
• The sync method begin_delete_secret and async delete_secret now return pollers that return a DeletedSecret
• Renamed Secret to KeyVaultSecret
• KeyVaultSecret properties created, expires, and updated renamed to created_on, expires_on, and updated_on
• The vault_endpoint parameter of SecretClient has been renamed to vault_url
• The property vault_endpoint has been renamed to vault_url in all models

4.0.0b4 (2019-10-08)

Breaking changes:

• Secret now has attribute properties, which holds certain properties of the secret, such as version. This changes the shape of the returned Secret type, as certain properties of Secret (such as version) have to be accessed through the properties property.

• update_secret has been renamed to update_secret_properties

• The vault_url parameter of SecretClient has been renamed to vault_endpoint

• The property vault_url has been renamed to vault_endpoint in all models

Fixes and improvements

• list_secrets and list_secret_versions return the correct type

4.0.0b3 (2019-09-11)

This release includes only internal changes.

4.0.0b2 (2019-08-06)

Breaking changes:

• Removed azure.core.Configuration from the public API in preparation for a revamped configuration API. Static create_config methods have been renamed _create_config, and will be removed in a future release.
• This version of the library requires azure-core 1.0.0b2
  • If you later want to revert to a version requiring azure-core 1.0.0b1, of this or another Azure SDK library, you must explicitly install azure-core 1.0.0b1 as well. For example: pip install azure-core==1.0.0b1 azure-keyvault-secrets==4.0.0b1

New features:

• Distributed tracing framework OpenCensus is now supported
• Added support for HTTP challenge based authentication, allowing clients to interact with vaults in sovereign clouds.

4.0.0b1 (2019-06-28)

Version 4.0.0b1 is the first preview of our efforts to create a user-friendly and Pythonic client library for Azure Key Vault. For more information about preview releases of other Azure SDK libraries, please visit https://aka.ms/azure-sdk-preview1-python.

This library is not a direct replacement for azure-keyvault. Applications using that library would require code changes to use azure-keyvault-secrets. This package's documentation and samples demonstrate the new API.

Major changes from azure-keyvault

• Packages scoped by functionality
  • azure-keyvault-secrets contains a client for secret operations, azure-keyvault-keys contains a client for key operations
• Client instances are scoped to vaults (an instance interacts with one vault only)
• Asynchronous API supported on Python 3.5.3+
  • the azure.keyvault.secrets.aio namespace contains an async equivalent of the synchronous client in azure.keyvault.secrets
• Authentication using azure-identity credentials
  • see this package's documentation , and the Azure Identity documentation for more information

azure-keyvault features not implemented in this library

• Certificate management APIs
• National cloud support. This release supports public global cloud vaults, e.g. https://{vault-name}.vault.azure.net