The Azure Identity library provides Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) token authentication support across the Azure SDK. It provides a set of TokenCredential implementations which can be used to construct Azure SDK clients which support Azure AD token authentication.
Source code | Package (PyPI) | API reference documentation | Azure AD documentation
Install Azure Identity with pip:
pip install azure-identity- an Azure subscription
- Python 3.7 or a recent version of Python 3 (this library doesn't support end-of-life versions)
When debugging and executing code locally it is typical for developers to use their own accounts for authenticating calls to Azure services. The Azure Identity library supports authenticating through developer tools to simplify local development.
Developers using Visual Studio Code can use the Azure Account extension to authenticate via the editor. Apps using DefaultAzureCredential or VisualStudioCodeCredential can then use this account to authenticate calls in their app when running locally.
To authenticate in Visual Studio Code, ensure the Azure Account extension is installed. Once installed, open the Command Palette and run the Azure: Sign In command.
It's a known issue that VisualStudioCodeCredential doesn't work with Azure Account extension versions newer than 0.9.11. A long-term fix to this problem is in progress. In the meantime, consider authenticating via the Azure CLI.
DefaultAzureCredential and AzureCliCredential can authenticate as the user
signed in to the Azure CLI. To sign in to the Azure CLI, run
az login. On a system with a default web browser, the Azure CLI will launch
the browser to authenticate a user.
When no default browser is available, az login will use the device code
authentication flow. This can also be selected manually by running az login --use-device-code.
Developers coding outside of an IDE can also use the Azure Developer CLI to authenticate. Applications using the DefaultAzureCredential or the AzureDeveloperCliCredential can then use this account to authenticate calls in their application when running locally.
To authenticate with the Azure Developer CLI, users can run the command azd login. For users running on a system with a default web browser, the Azure Developer CLI will launch the browser to authenticate the user.
For systems without a default web browser, the azd login --use-device-code command will use the device code authentication flow.
A credential is a class which contains or can obtain the data needed for a service client to authenticate requests. Service clients across the Azure SDK accept a credential instance when they are constructed, and use that credential to authenticate requests.
The Azure Identity library focuses on OAuth authentication with Azure AD. It offers a variety of credential classes capable of acquiring an Azure AD access token. See the Credential classes section below for a list of this library's credential classes.
DefaultAzureCredential is appropriate for most applications which will run in Azure because it combines common production credentials with development credentials. DefaultAzureCredential attempts to authenticate via the following mechanisms, in this order, stopping when one succeeds:
Note:
DefaultAzureCredentialis intended to simplify getting started with the library by handling common scenarios with reasonable default behaviors. Developers who want more control or whose scenario isn't served by the default settings should use other credential types.
- Environment -
DefaultAzureCredentialwill read account information specified via environment variables and use it to authenticate. - Workload Identity - If the application is deployed to an Azure Kubernetes service with Managed Identity enabled,
DefaultAzureCredentialwill authenticate with it. - Managed Identity - If the application is deployed to an Azure host with Managed Identity enabled,
DefaultAzureCredentialwill authenticate with it. - Azure Developer CLI - If the developer has authenticated via the Azure Developer CLI
azd logincommand, theDefaultAzureCredentialwill authenticate with that account. - Azure CLI - If a user has signed in via the Azure CLI
az logincommand,DefaultAzureCredentialwill authenticate as that user. - Azure PowerShell - If a user has signed in via Azure PowerShell's
Connect-AzAccountcommand,DefaultAzureCredentialwill authenticate as that user. - Interactive browser - If enabled,
DefaultAzureCredentialwill interactively authenticate a user via the default browser. This is disabled by default.
Due to a known issue, VisualStudioCodeCredential has been removed from the DefaultAzureCredential token chain. When the issue is resolved in a future release, this change will be reverted.
The following examples are provided below:
- Authenticate with DefaultAzureCredential
- Define a custom authentication flow with ChainedTokenCredential
- Async credentials
More details on configuring your environment to use the DefaultAzureCredential
can be found in the class's reference documentation.
This example demonstrates authenticating the BlobServiceClient from the
azure-storage-blob library using
DefaultAzureCredential.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceClient
default_credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = BlobServiceClient(account_url, credential=default_credential)Interactive authentication is disabled in the DefaultAzureCredential by
default and can be enabled with a keyword argument:
DefaultAzureCredential(exclude_interactive_browser_credential=False)When enabled, DefaultAzureCredential falls back to interactively
authenticating via the system's default web browser when no other credential is
available.
Many Azure hosts allow the assignment of a user assigned managed identity. To
configure DefaultAzureCredential to authenticate a user assigned identity,
use the managed_identity_client_id keyword argument:
DefaultAzureCredential(managed_identity_client_id=client_id)Alternatively, set the environment variable AZURE_CLIENT_ID to the identity's
client ID.
DefaultAzureCredential is generally the quickest way to get started developing
applications for Azure. For more advanced scenarios,
ChainedTokenCredential links multiple credential instances
to be tried sequentially when authenticating. It will try each chained
credential in turn until one provides a token or fails to authenticate due to
an error.
The following example demonstrates creating a credential which will attempt to
authenticate using managed identity, and fall back to authenticating via the
Azure CLI when a managed identity is unavailable. This example uses the
EventHubProducerClient from the azure-eventhub client library.
from azure.eventhub import EventHubProducerClient
from azure.identity import AzureCliCredential, ChainedTokenCredential, ManagedIdentityCredential
managed_identity = ManagedIdentityCredential()
azure_cli = AzureCliCredential()
credential_chain = ChainedTokenCredential(managed_identity, azure_cli)
client = EventHubProducerClient(namespace, eventhub_name, credential_chain)This library includes a set of async APIs. To use the async credentials in azure.identity.aio, you must first install an async transport, such as aiohttp. See azure-core documentation for more information.
Async credentials should be closed when they're no longer needed. Each async
credential is an async context manager and defines an async close method. For
example:
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
# call close when the credential is no longer needed
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
...
await credential.close()
# alternatively, use the credential as an async context manager
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
async with credential:
...This example demonstrates authenticating the asynchronous SecretClient from
azure-keyvault-secrets with an asynchronous
credential.
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient
default_credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", default_credential)Managed identity authentication is supported via either the DefaultAzureCredential or the ManagedIdentityCredential directly for the following Azure services:
- Azure App Service and Azure Functions
- Azure Arc
- Azure Cloud Shell
- Azure Kubernetes Service
- Azure Service Fabric
- Azure Virtual Machines
- Azure Virtual Machines Scale Sets
from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential(client_id=managed_identity_client_id)
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)from azure.identity import ManagedIdentityCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = ManagedIdentityCredential()
client = SecretClient("https://my-vault.vault.azure.net", credential)Credentials default to authenticating to the Azure AD endpoint for
Azure Public Cloud. To access resources in other clouds, such as Azure Government
or a private cloud, configure credentials with the authority argument.
AzureAuthorityHosts
defines authorities for well-known clouds:
from azure.identity import AzureAuthorityHosts
DefaultAzureCredential(authority=AzureAuthorityHosts.AZURE_GOVERNMENT)Not all credentials require this configuration. Credentials which authenticate
through a development tool, such as AzureCliCredential, use that tool's
configuration. Similarly, VisualStudioCodeCredential accepts an authority
argument but defaults to the authority matching VS Code's "Azure: Cloud" setting.
| Credential | Usage |
|---|---|
DefaultAzureCredential |
Provides a simplified authentication experience to quickly start developing applications run in Azure. |
ChainedTokenCredential |
Allows users to define custom authentication flows composing multiple credentials. |
EnvironmentCredential |
Authenticates a service principal or user via credential information specified in environment variables. |
ManagedIdentityCredential |
Authenticates the managed identity of an Azure resource. |
| Credential | Usage | Reference |
|---|---|---|
CertificateCredential |
Authenticates a service principal using a certificate. | Service principal authentication |
ClientAssertionCredential |
Authenticates a service principal using a signed client assertion. | |
ClientSecretCredential |
Authenticates a service principal using a secret. | Service principal authentication |
| Credential | Usage | Reference |
|---|---|---|
AuthorizationCodeCredential |
Authenticates a user with a previously obtained authorization code. | OAuth2 authentication code |
DeviceCodeCredential |
Interactively authenticates a user on devices with limited UI. | Device code authentication |
InteractiveBrowserCredential |
Interactively authenticates a user with the default system browser. | OAuth2 authentication code |
OnBehalfOfCredential |
Propagates the delegated user identity and permissions through the request chain. | On-behalf-of authentication |
UsernamePasswordCredential |
Authenticates a user with a username and password (does not support multi-factor authentication). | Username + password authentication |
| Credential | Usage | Reference |
|---|---|---|
AzureCliCredential |
Authenticates in a development environment with the Azure CLI. | Azure CLI authentication |
PowerShellCredential |
Authenticates in a development environment with the Azure PowerShell. | Azure PowerShell authentication |
VisualStudioCodeCredential |
Authenticates as the user signed in to the Visual Studio Code Azure Account extension. | VS Code Azure Account extension |
DefaultAzureCredential and EnvironmentCredential can be configured with environment variables. Each type of authentication requires values for specific variables:
| Variable name | Value |
|---|---|
AZURE_CLIENT_ID |
ID of an Azure AD application |
AZURE_TENANT_ID |
ID of the application's Azure AD tenant |
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET |
one of the application's client secrets |
| Variable name | Value |
|---|---|
AZURE_CLIENT_ID |
ID of an Azure AD application |
AZURE_TENANT_ID |
ID of the application's Azure AD tenant |
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH |
path to a PEM or PKCS12 certificate file including private key |
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD |
password of the certificate file, if any |
| Variable name | Value |
|---|---|
AZURE_CLIENT_ID |
ID of an Azure AD application |
AZURE_USERNAME |
a username (usually an email address) |
AZURE_PASSWORD |
that user's password |
Configuration is attempted in the above order. For example, if values for a client secret and certificate are both present, the client secret will be used.
See the troubleshooting guide for details on how to diagnose various failure scenarios.
Credentials raise CredentialUnavailableError when they're unable to attempt
authentication because they lack required data or state. For example,
EnvironmentCredential will raise this exception when
its configuration is incomplete.
Credentials raise azure.core.exceptions.ClientAuthenticationError when they fail
to authenticate. ClientAuthenticationError has a message attribute which
describes why authentication failed. When raised by
DefaultAzureCredential or ChainedTokenCredential,
the message collects error messages from each credential in the chain.
For more details on handling specific Azure AD errors, see the Azure AD error code documentation.
This library uses the standard logging library for logging. Credentials log basic information, including HTTP sessions (URLs, headers, etc.) at INFO level. These log entries do not contain authentication secrets.
Detailed DEBUG level logging, including request/response bodies and header values, is not enabled by default. It can be enabled with the logging_enable argument, for example:
credential = DefaultAzureCredential(logging_enable=True)CAUTION: DEBUG level logs from credentials contain sensitive information. These logs must be protected to avoid compromising account security.
Client and management libraries listed on the Azure SDK release page which support Azure AD authentication accept credentials from this library. You can learn more about using these libraries in their documentation, which is linked from the release page.
This library doesn't support Azure AD B2C.
For other open issues, refer to the library's GitHub repository.
If you encounter bugs or have suggestions, please open an issue.
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.
