Azure Key Vault Keys client library for Python — Azure SDK for Python 2.0.0 documentation

Azure Key Vault helps solve the following problems:

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

Getting started¶

Install the package¶

Install the Azure Key Vault Keys client library for Python with pip:

pip install azure-keyvault-keys

Prerequisites¶

• An Azure subscription

• Python 2.7, 3.5.3, or later

• A Key Vault. If you need to create one, you can use theAzure 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: .. code-block:: sh

    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": "" }, "resourceGroup": "my-resource-group", "type": ""
    }

    The "vaultUri" property is the vault_url used by KeyClient.

Authenticate the client¶

To interact with a Key Vault’s keys, you’ll need an instance of theKeyClient class. Creating one requires a vault url andcredential. This document demonstrates using DefaultAzureCredential as the credential, authenticating with a service principal’s client id, secret, and tenant id. Other authentication methods are supported. See theazure-identity documentation for more details.

Create a service principal¶

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: .. code-block:: Bash

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

• Use the output 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"

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

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

  Possible key permissions:

  • Key management: backup, delete, get, list, purge, recover, restore, create, update, import

  • Cryptographic operations: decrypt, encrypt, unwrapKey, wrapKey, verify, sign

Create a client¶

After setting the AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET andAZURE_TENANT_ID environment variables, you can create theKeyClient:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.keys import KeyClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()key_client = KeyClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)

Key concepts¶

With a KeyClient, you can get keys from the vault, create new keys and new versions of existing keys, update key metadata, and delete keys, as shown in the examples below.

Keys¶

Azure Key Vault can create and store RSA and elliptic curve keys. Both can optionally be protected by hardware security modules (HSMs). Azure Key Vault can also perform cryptographic operations with them. For more information about keys and supported operations and algorithms, see theKey Vault documentation.

Examples¶

This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:

Create a Key¶

create_rsa_key and create_ec_key create RSA and elliptic curve keys in the vault, respectively. If a key with the same name already exists, a new version of that key is created.

# Create an RSA keyrsa_key = key_client.create_rsa_key("rsa-key-name", size=2048)print(rsa_key.name)print(rsa_key.key_type)# Create an elliptic curve keyec_key = key_client.create_ec_key("ec-key-name", curve="P-256")print(ec_key.name)print(ec_key.key_type)

Retrieve a Key¶

get_key retrieves a key previously stored in the vault.

key = key_client.get_key("key-name")print(key.name)

Update an existing Key¶

update_key updates a key previously stored in the Key Vault.

# Clients may specify additional application-specific metadata in the form of tags.tags = {"foo": "updated tag"}updated_key_properties = key_client.update_key_properties("key-name", tags=tags)print(updated_key_properties.name)print(updated_key_properties.version)print(updated_key_properties.updated_on)print(updated_key_properties.tags)

Delete a Key¶

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

deleted_key = key_client.begin_delete_key("key-name").result()print(deleted_key.name)print(deleted_key.deleted_date)

List keys¶

This example lists all the keys in the client’s vault.

keys = key_client.list_properties_of_keys()for key in keys: # the list doesn't include values or versions of the keys print(key.name)

Cryptographic operations¶

CryptographyClient enables cryptographic operations (encrypt/decrypt, wrap/unwrap, sign/verify) using a particular key.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.keys import KeyClientfrom azure.keyvault.keys.crypto import CryptographyClient, EncryptionAlgorithmcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()key_client = KeyClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)key = key_client.get_key("mykey")crypto_client = CryptographyClient(key, credential=credential)result = crypto_client.encrypt(EncryptionAlgorithm.rsa_oaep, plaintext)decrypted = crypto_client.decrypt(result.algorithm, result.ciphertext)

See thepackage documentationfor more details of the cryptography API.

Asynchronously create a Key¶

create_rsa_key and create_ec_key create RSA and elliptic curve keys in the vault, respectively. If a key with the same name already exists, a new version of the key is created.

from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.keys.aio import KeyClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()key_client = KeyClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)# Create an RSA keyrsa_key = await key_client.create_rsa_key("rsa-key-name", size=2048)print(rsa_key.name)print(rsa_key.key_type)# Create an elliptic curve keyec_key = await key_client.create_ec_key("ec-key-name", curve="P-256")print(ec_key.name)print(ec_key.key_type)

Asynchronously list keys¶

This example lists all the keys in the client’s vault:

keys = key_client.list_properties_of_keys()async for key in keys: print(key.name)

Troubleshooting¶

Logging¶

Network trace logging is disabled by default for this library. When enabled, HTTP requests will be logged at DEBUG level using the logging library. You can configure logging to print debugging information to stdout or write it to a file:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.keys import KeyClientimport sysimport logging# Create a logger for the 'azure' SDKlogger = logging.getLogger(__name__)logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)# Configure a console outputhandler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)logger.addHandler(handler)credential = DefaultAzureCredential()# Enable network trace logging. Each HTTP request will be logged at DEBUG level.client = KeyClient(vault_url="", credential=credential, logging_enable=True)

Network trace logging can also be enabled for any single operation:

key = key_client.get_key("key-name", 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:

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 .

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 theMicrosoft 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.

Indices and tables¶

Developer Documentation