azure-identity 1.0.0b1

Microsoft Azure Identity Library for Python

Azure Identity client library for Python

Azure Identity simplifies authentication across the Azure SDK. It supports token authentication using an Azure Active Directory service principal or managed identity.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• an Azure subscription
  • if you don't have one, you can sign up for a free account
• Python 2.7 or 3.5.3+

Install the package

Install Azure Identity with pip:

pip install azure-identity

Key concepts

Credentials

Azure Identity offers a variety of credential classes in the azure.identity namespace. These are accepted by Azure SDK data plane clients. Each client library documents its Azure Identity integration in its README and samples. Azure SDK resource management libraries (which have mgmt in their names) do not accept these credentials.

Credentials differ mostly in configuration:

credential class	identity	configuration
DefaultAzureCredential	service principal or managed identity	none for managed identity; environment variables for service principal
ManagedIdentityCredential	managed identity	none
EnvironmentCredential	service principal	environment variables
ClientSecretCredential	service principal	constructor parameters
CertificateCredential	service principal	constructor parameters

Credentials can be chained and tried in turn until one succeeds; see chaining credentials for details.

All credentials have an async equivalent in the azure.identity.aio namespace. These are supported on Python 3.5.3+. See the async credentials example for details.

DefaultAzureCredential

DefaultAzureCredential is appropriate for most scenarios. It supports authenticating as a service principal or managed identity. To authenticate as a service principal, provide configuration in environment variables as described in the next section.

Authenticating as a managed identity requires no configuration, but does require platform support. See the managed identity documentation for more information.

Environment variables

DefaultAzureCredential and EnvironmentCredential are configured for service principal authentication with these environment variables:

variable name	value
AZURE_CLIENT_ID	service principal's app id
AZURE_TENANT_ID	id of the principal's Azure Active Directory tenant
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET	one of the service principal's client secrets
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH	path to a PEM-encoded certificate file including private key (without password)

Either AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET or AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH must be set. If both are set, the client secret will be used.

Examples

DefaultAzureCredential

# The default credential first checks environment variables for configuration as described above.
# If environment configuration is incomplete, it will try managed identity.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential

credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

# Azure SDK clients accept the credential as a parameter
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

client = SecretClient(vault_url, credential)

Authenticating as a service principal:

# using a client secret
from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential

credential = ClientSecretCredential(client_id, client_secret, tenant_id)

# using a certificate
from azure.identity import CertificateCredential

# requires a PEM-encoded certificate with private key, not protected with a password
cert_path = "/app/certs/certificate.pem"
credential = CertificateCredential(client_id, tenant_id, cert_path)

# using environment variables
from azure.identity import EnvironmentCredential

# authenticate with client secret or certificate,
# depending on environment variable settings
# (see "Environment variables" above for variable names and expected values)
credential = EnvironmentCredential()

Chaining credentials:

from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential, ManagedIdentityCredential, ChainedTokenCredential

first_principal = ClientSecretCredential(client_id, client_secret, tenant_id)
second_principal = ClientSecretCredential(another_client_id, another_secret, tenant_id)

# when an access token is requested, the chain will try each
# credential in order, stopping when one provides a token
credential_chain = ChainedTokenCredential(first_principal, second_principal)

# the chain can be used anywhere a credential is required
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient

client = SecretClient(vault_url, credential=credential_chain)

Async credentials:

# all credentials have async equivalents supported on Python 3.5.3+
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential

default_credential = DefaultAzureCredential()

# async credentials have the same API and configuration as
# their synchronous counterparts...
from azure.identity.aio import ClientSecretCredential

credential = ClientSecretCredential(client_id, client_secret, tenant_id)

# ...and are used with async Azure SDK clients in the same way
from azure.keyvault.aio import SecretClient

client = SecretClient(vault_url, credential)

Troubleshooting

General

Credentials raise azure.core.exceptions.ClientAuthenticationError when they fail to authenticate. ClientAuthenticationError has a message attribute which describes why authentication failed. When raised by ChainedTokenCredential, the message collects error messages from each credential in the chain.

Next steps

Provide Feedback

If you encounter bugs or have suggestions, please open an issue.

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 [e-mail] with any additional questions or comments.

Release History

1.0.0b1

First preview release of the library.