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

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)| Package (Conda)| 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 .Python 3.8 or later is required to use this package. For more details, please refer to Azure SDK for Python version support policy.

Getting started¶

Install packages¶

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

pipinstallazure-keyvault-secretsazure-identity

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

Prerequisites¶

Authenticate the client¶

In order to interact with the Azure Key Vault service, you will need an instance of a SecretClient, as well as a vault url and a credential object. This document demonstrates using a DefaultAzureCredential, which is appropriate for most scenarios, including local development and production environments. We recommend using a managed identity for authentication in production environments.

See azure-identity documentation for more information about other methods of authentication and their corresponding credential types.

Create a client¶

After configuring your environment for the DefaultAzureCredential to use a suitable method of authentication, you can do the following to create a secret client (replacing the value of VAULT_URL with your vault’s URL):

VAULT_URL = os.environ["VAULT_URL"]credential = DefaultAzureCredential()client = SecretClient(vault_url=VAULT_URL, credential=credential)

NOTE: For an asynchronous client, import azure.keyvault.secrets.aio’s SecretClient instead.

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 theKey Vault documentation.

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

Examples¶

This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:

Set a secret¶

set_secretcreates 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 DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", 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_secretretrieves a secret previously stored in the Key Vault.

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)secret = secret_client.get_secret("secret-name")print(secret.name)print(secret.value)

Update secret metadata¶

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

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)# Clients may specify the content type of a secret to assist in interpreting the secret data when it's retrievedcontent_type = "text/plain"# We will also disable the secret for further useupdated_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_secretrequests 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 DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", 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_secretslists 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 DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", 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. Seeazure-core documentationfor 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 DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()# call close when the client and credential are no longer neededclient = SecretClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)...await client.close()await credential.close()# alternatively, use them as async context managers (contextlib.AsyncExitStack can help)client = SecretClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)async with client: async with credential: ...

Asynchronously create a secret¶

set_secretcreates a secret in the Key Vault with the specified optional arguments.

from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", 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_secretslists the properties of all of the secrets in the client’s vault.

from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClientcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", 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-secretstroubleshooting guidefor 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 raisesResourceNotFoundError:

from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientfrom azure.core.exceptions import ResourceNotFoundErrorcredential = DefaultAzureCredential()secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="", credential=credential)try: secret_client.get_secret("which-does-not-exist")except ResourceNotFoundError as e: print(e.message)

Logging¶

This library uses the standardlogging 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 DefaultAzureCredentialfrom azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClientimport sysimport logging# Create a logger for the 'azure' SDKlogger = logging.getLogger('azure')logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)# Configure a console outputhandler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)logger.addHandler(handler)credential = DefaultAzureCredential()# This client will log detailed information about its HTTP sessions, at DEBUG levelsecret_client = SecretClient( vault_url="", 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 theAPI 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

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 theCode of Conduct FAQ or contact with any additional questions or comments.

Indices and tables¶

Developer Documentation