Azure Key Vault Secrets client library for Python
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 https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-python/issues/20691.
Python 3.9 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 and
azure-identity with pip:
pip install azure-keyvault-secrets azure-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 the
Key Vault documentation.
SecretClient can set secret values in the vault, update
secret metadata, and delete secrets, as shown in the
examples below.
Examples
This section contains code snippets covering common tasks:
Set a secret
set_secret
creates 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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", 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_secret
retrieves a secret previously stored in the Key Vault.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
secret = secret_client.get_secret("secret-name")
print(secret.name)
print(secret.value)
update_secret_properties
updates a secret's metadata. It cannot change the secret's value; use set_secret to set a secret's
value.
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
# Clients may specify the content type of a secret to assist in interpreting the secret data when it's retrieved
content_type = "text/plain"
# We will also disable the secret for further use
updated_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_secret
requests 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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", 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_secrets
lists 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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", 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.
See
azure-core documentation
for 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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
# call close when the client and credential are no longer needed
client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
...
await client.close()
await credential.close()
# alternatively, use them as async context managers (contextlib.AsyncExitStack can help)
client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
async with client:
async with credential:
...
Asynchronously create a secret
set_secret
creates a secret in the Key Vault with the specified optional arguments.
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", 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_secrets
lists the properties of all of the secrets in the client's vault.
from azure.identity.aio import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets.aio import SecretClient
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", 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-secrets
troubleshooting guide
for 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 raises
ResourceNotFoundError:
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
from azure.core.exceptions import ResourceNotFoundError
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
secret_client = SecretClient(vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/", credential=credential)
try:
secret_client.get_secret("which-does-not-exist")
except ResourceNotFoundError as e:
print(e.message)
Logging
This library uses the standard
logging 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 DefaultAzureCredential
from azure.keyvault.secrets import SecretClient
import sys
import logging
# Create a logger for the 'azure' SDK
logger = logging.getLogger('azure')
logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
# Configure a console output
handler = logging.StreamHandler(stream=sys.stdout)
logger.addHandler(handler)
credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
# This client will log detailed information about its HTTP sessions, at DEBUG level
secret_client = SecretClient(
vault_url="https://my-key-vault.vault.azure.net/",
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 the
API 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 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.
Release History
4.11.0 (2026-03-26)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
2025-07-01
- Added support for retrieving secrets with
out_content_type
- Added the
previous_version property to SecretProperties
Other Changes
- Key Vault API version
2025-07-01 is now the default
4.10.0 (2025-06-16)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
7.6
Other Changes
- Python 3.8 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.9 or later.
- Key Vault API version
7.6 is now the default
- (From 4.10.0b1) Updated minimum
typing-extensions version to 4.6.0
4.10.0b1 (2025-03-20)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
7.6-preview.2
Other Changes
- Updated minimum
typing-extensions version to 4.6.0
4.9.0 (2024-10-17)
Features Added
- Added support for Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE).
enable_cae=True is passed to all get_token requests.
Bugs Fixed
- Typing errors from using Key Vault clients as context managers have been fixed
(#34744)
Other Changes
- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.31.0
4.8.0 (2024-02-22)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
7.5
Bugs Fixed
- (From 4.8.0b1) Token requests made during AD FS authentication no longer specify an erroneous "adfs" tenant ID
(#29888)
Other Changes
- Python 3.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.8 or later.
asyncio is no longer directly referenced by the library
(#33819)- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.29.5
- Dropped
azure-common requirement
4.8.0b2 (2023-11-03)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
7.5-preview.1
Other Changes
- Key Vault API version
7.5-preview.1 is now the default
4.8.0b1 (2023-05-16)
Bugs Fixed
- Token requests made during AD FS authentication no longer specify an erroneous "adfs" tenant ID
(#29888)
4.7.0 (2023-03-16)
Features Added
- Added support for service API version
7.4
- Clients each have a
send_request method that can be used to send custom requests using the
client's existing pipeline (#25172)
Other Changes
- Python 3.6 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.7 or later.
- Key Vault API version
7.4 is now the default
- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.24.0
- Dropped
msrest requirement
- Added requirement for
isodate>=0.6.1 (isodate was required by msrest)
- Added requirement for
typing-extensions>=4.0.1
4.6.0 (2022-09-19)
Breaking Changes
- Clients verify the challenge resource matches the vault domain. This should affect few customers,
who can provide
verify_challenge_resource=False to client constructors to disable.
See https://aka.ms/azsdk/blog/vault-uri for more information.
4.5.1 (2022-08-11)
Other Changes
- Documentation improvements
(#25039)
4.5.0b1 (2022-06-07)
Bugs Fixed
- Port numbers are now preserved in the
vault_url property of a KeyVaultSecretIdentifier
(#24446)
4.4.0 (2022-03-28)
Features Added
- Key Vault API version 7.3 is now the default
- Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using
azure-identity
1.8.0 or newer (#20698)
- (From 4.4.0b3) Added
managed property to SecretProperties
Other Changes
- (From 4.4.0b3) Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.20.0
- (From 4.4.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication,
get_token calls during challenge
authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument
(#20698). See
https://aka.ms/azsdk/python/identity/tokencredential for more details on how to integrate
this parameter if get_token is implemented by a custom credential.
4.4.0b3 (2022-02-08)
Features Added
- Added
managed property to SecretProperties
Other Changes
- Python 2.7 is no longer supported. Please use Python version 3.6 or later.
- (From 4.4.0b2) To support multi-tenant authentication,
get_token calls during challenge
authentication requests now pass in a tenant_id keyword argument
(#20698)
4.4.0b2 (2021-11-11)
Features Added
- Added support for multi-tenant authentication when using
azure-identity 1.7.1 or newer
(#20698)
Other Changes
- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.15.0
4.4.0b1 (2021-09-09)
Features Added
- Key Vault API version 7.3-preview is now the default
Other Changes
- Updated type hints to fix mypy errors
(#19158)
4.3.0 (2021-06-22)
This is the last version to support Python 3.5. The next version will require Python 2.7 or 3.6+.
Fixed
- Correct typing for async paging methods
Changed
- Key Vault API version 7.2 is now the default
- Updated minimum
msrest version to 0.6.21
Added
- Added class
KeyVaultSecretIdentifier that parses out a full ID returned by Key Vault,
so users can easily access the secret's name, vault_url, and version.
4.2.0 (2020-08-11)
Fixed
- Values of
x-ms-keyvault-region and x-ms-keyvault-service-version headers
are no longer redacted in logging output
Changed
- Key Vault API version 7.1 is now the default
- Updated minimum
azure-core version to 1.7.0
Added
- At construction, clients accept a
CustomHookPolicy through the optional
keyword argument custom_hook_policy
- All client requests include a unique ID in the header
x-ms-client-request-id
- Dependency on
azure-common for multiapi support
4.2.0b1 (2020-03-10)
- Support for Key Vault API version 7.1-preview
(#10124)
- Added
recoverable_days to CertificateProperties
- Added
ApiVersion enum identifying Key Vault versions supported by this package
4.1.0 (2020-03-10)
SecretClient instances have a close method which closes opened sockets.
Used as a context manager, a SecretClient closes opened sockets on exit.
(#9906)- Pollers no longer sleep after operation completion
(#9991)
4.0.1 (2020-02-11)
azure.keyvault.secrets defines __version__- Challenge authentication policy preserves request options
(#8999)
- Updated
msrest requirement to >=0.6.0
- Challenge authentication policy requires TLS
(#9457)
- Methods no longer raise the internal error
KeyVaultErrorException
(#9690)
4.0.0 (2019-10-31)
Breaking changes:
- Moved optional parameters of two methods into kwargs (
docs
detail the new keyword arguments):
set_secret now has positional parameters name and valueupdate_secret_properties now has positional parameters name and
(optional) version
- Renamed
list_secrets to list_properties_of_secrets
- Renamed
list_secret_versions to list_properties_of_secret_versions
- Renamed sync method
delete_secret to begin_delete_secret
- The sync method
begin_delete_secret and async delete_secret now return pollers that return a DeletedSecret
- Renamed
Secret to KeyVaultSecret
KeyVaultSecret properties created, expires, and updated renamed to created_on,
expires_on, and updated_on- The
vault_endpoint parameter of SecretClient has been renamed to vault_url
- The property
vault_endpoint has been renamed to vault_url in all models
4.0.0b4 (2019-10-08)
Breaking changes:
-
Secret now has attribute properties, which holds certain properties of the
secret, such as version. This changes the shape of the returned Secret type,
as certain properties of Secret (such as version) have to be accessed
through the properties property.
-
update_secret has been renamed to update_secret_properties
-
The vault_url parameter of SecretClient has been renamed to vault_endpoint
-
The property vault_url has been renamed to vault_endpoint in all models
Fixes and improvements
list_secrets and list_secret_versions return the correct type
4.0.0b3 (2019-09-11)
This release includes only internal changes.
4.0.0b2 (2019-08-06)
Breaking changes:
- Removed
azure.core.Configuration from the public API in preparation for a
revamped configuration API. Static create_config methods have been renamed
_create_config, and will be removed in a future release.
- This version of the library requires
azure-core 1.0.0b2
- If you later want to revert to a version requiring azure-core 1.0.0b1,
of this or another Azure SDK library, you must explicitly install azure-core
1.0.0b1 as well. For example:
pip install azure-core==1.0.0b1 azure-keyvault-secrets==4.0.0b1
New features:
- Distributed tracing framework OpenCensus is now supported
- Added support for HTTP challenge based authentication, allowing clients to
interact with vaults in sovereign clouds.
4.0.0b1 (2019-06-28)
Version 4.0.0b1 is the first preview of our efforts to create a user-friendly
and Pythonic client library for Azure Key Vault. For more information about
preview releases of other Azure SDK libraries, please visit
https://aka.ms/azure-sdk-preview1-python.
This library is not a direct replacement for azure-keyvault. Applications
using that library would require code changes to use azure-keyvault-secrets.
This package's
documentation
and
samples
demonstrate the new API.
Major changes from azure-keyvault
- Packages scoped by functionality
azure-keyvault-secrets contains a client for secret operations,
azure-keyvault-keys contains a client for key operations
- Client instances are scoped to vaults (an instance interacts with one vault
only)
- Asynchronous API supported on Python 3.5.3+
- the
azure.keyvault.secrets.aio namespace contains an async equivalent of
the synchronous client in azure.keyvault.secrets
- Authentication using
azure-identity credentials
azure-keyvault features not implemented in this library
- Certificate management APIs
- National cloud support. This release supports public global cloud vaults,
e.g. https://{vault-name}.vault.azure.net