Azure Key Vault helps solve the following problems:
- Cryptographic key management (this library) - create, store, and control access to the keys used to encrypt your data
- Secrets management
(
azure-keyvault-secrets
) - securely store and control access to tokens, passwords, certificates, API keys, and other secrets - Certificate management
(
azure-keyvault-certificates
) - create, manage, and deploy public and private SSL/TLS certificates
Source code | Package (PyPI) | API reference documentation | Product documentation | Samples
Install the Azure Key Vault Keys client library for Python with pip:
pip install azure-keyvault-keys
- An Azure subscription
- Python 2.7, 3.5.3, 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 thevault_endpoint
used byKeyClient
.
-
To interact with a Key Vault's keys, you'll need an instance of the
KeyClient class. Creating one requires a vault url and
credential. 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 the
azure-identity documentation for more details.
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), 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
After setting the AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET and AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variables, you can create the KeyClient:
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.keys import KeyClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
key_client = KeyClient(vault_endpoint=<your-vault-url>, credential=credential)
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.
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 the Key Vault documentation .
This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:
- Create a Key
- Retrieve a Key
- Update an existing Key
- Delete a Key
- List Keys
- Asynchronously create a Key
- Asynchronously list Keys
- Perform cryptographic operations
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 key
rsa_key = key_client.create_rsa_key("rsa-key-name", hsm=False, size=2048)
print(rsa_key.name)
print(rsa_key.key_material.kty)
# Create an elliptic curve key
ec_key = key_client.create_ec_key("ec-key-name", hsm=False, curve="P-256")
print(ec_key.name)
print(ec_key.key_material.kty)
get_key
retrieves a key previously stored in the vault.
key = key_client.get_key("key-name")
print(key.name)
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)
print(updated_key_properties.tags)
delete_key
deletes a key previously stored in the Key Vault. If
soft-delete is not enabled for the vault, this permanently
deletes the key.
deleted_key = key_client.delete_key("key-name")
print(deleted_key.name)
print(deleted_key.deleted_date)
This example lists all the keys in the client's vault.
keys = key_client.list_keys()
for key in keys:
# the list doesn't include values or versions of the keys
print(key.name)
CryptographyClient
enables cryptographic operations (encrypt/decrypt,
wrap/unwrap, sign/verify) using a particular key.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.keys import KeyClient
from azure.keyvault.keys.crypto import EncryptionAlgorithm
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
key_client = KeyClient(vault_endpoint=vault_endpoint, credential=credential)
key = key_client.get_key("mykey")
crypto_client = key_client.get_cryptography_client(key)
result = crypto_client.encrypt(EncryptionAlgorithm.rsa_oaep, plaintext)
decrypted = crypto_client.decrypt(result.algorithm, result.ciphertext)
See the package documentation for more details of the cryptography API.
This library includes a complete async API supported on Python 3.5+. To use it, you must
first install an async transport, such as aiohttp
.
See
azure-core documentation
for more information.
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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.keys.aio import KeyClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
key_client = KeyClient(vault_endpoint=vault_endpoint, credential=credential)
# Create an RSA key
rsa_key = await key_client.create_rsa_key("rsa-key-name", hsm=False, size=2048)
print(rsa_key.name)
print(rsa_key.key_material.kty)
# Create an elliptic curve key
ec_key = await key_client.create_ec_key("ec-key-name", hsm=False, curve="P-256")
print(ec_key.name)
print(ec_key.key_material.kty)
This example lists all the keys in the client's vault:
keys = key_client.list_keys()
async for key in keys:
print(key.name)
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, KeyClient
raises ResourceNotFoundError
:
from azure.core.exceptions import ResourceNotFoundError
key_client.delete_key("my-key")
try:
key_client.get_key("my-key")
except ResourceNotFoundError as e:
print(e.message)
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:
import sys
import logging
# Create a logger for the 'azure' SDK
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# Configure a console output
handler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)
logger.addHandler(handler)
# Configure a file output
file_handler = logging.FileHandler(filename)
logger.addHandler(file_handler)
# Enable network trace logging. Each HTTP request will be logged at DEBUG level.
client = KeyClient(vault_endpoint=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)
Several samples are available in the Azure SDK for Python GitHub repository. These provide example code for additional Key Vault scenarios:
- test_samples_keys.py and test_samples_keys_async.py - code snippets from the library's documentation
- hello_world.py and hello_world_async.py - create/get/update/delete keys
- backup_restore_operations.py and backup_restore_operations_async.py - backup and recover keys
For more extensive documentation on Azure Key Vault, see the API reference documentation.
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.