Azure Key Vault is a cloud service that provides a secure storage of secrets, such as passwords and database connection strings.
The secret client library allows you to securely store and control the access to tokens, passwords, API keys, and other secrets. This library offers operations to create, retrieve, update, delete, purge, backup, restore, and list the secrets and its versions.
Source code | Package (NuGet) | API reference documentation | Product documentation | Samples
Install the Azure Key Vault client library for .NET with NuGet:
Install-Package Azure.Security.KeyVault.Secrets
- An Azure subscription.
- An existing Key Vault. If you need to create a Key Vault, you can use the Azure Portal or Azure CLI.
If you use the Azure CLI, replace <your-resource-group-name>
and <your-key-vault-name>
with your own, unique names:
az keyvault create --resource-group <your-resource-group-name> --name <your-key-vault-name>
In order to interact with the Key Vault service, you'll need to create an instance of the SecretClient class. You would need a vault url, which you may see as "DNS Name" in the portal, and client secret credentials (client id, client secret, tenant id) to instantiate a client object.
Client secret credential authentication is being used in this getting started section but you can find more ways to authenticate with Azure identity. To use the DefaultAzureCredential provider shown below, or other credential providers provided with the Azure SDK, you should install the Azure.Identity package:
Install-Package Azure.Identity
Use the Azure CLI snippet below to create/get client secret credentials.
-
Create a service principal and configure its access to Azure resources:
az ad sp create-for-rbac -n <your-application-name> --skip-assignment
Output:
{ "appId": "generated-app-ID", "displayName": "dummy-app-name", "name": "http://dummy-app-name", "password": "random-password", "tenant": "tenant-ID" }
-
Use the returned credentials above 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 Powershell:
$Env:AZURE_CLIENT_ID="generated-app-ID" $Env:AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="random-password" $Env:AZURE_TENANT_ID="tenant-ID"
-
Grant the above mentioned application authorization to perform secret operations on the Key Vault:
az keyvault set-policy --name <your-key-vault-name> --spn $AZURE_CLIENT_ID --secret-permissions backup delete get list set
--secret-permissions: Accepted values: backup, delete, get, list, purge, recover, restore, set
-
Use the above mentioned Key Vault name to retrieve details of your Vault which also contains your Key Vault URL:
az keyvault show --name <your-key-vault-name>
Once you've populated the AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET and AZURE_TENANT_ID environment variables and replaced your-vault-url with the above returned URI, you can create the SecretClient:
// Create a new secret client using the default credential from Azure.Identity using environment variables previously set,
// including AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET, and AZURE_TENANT_ID.
var client = new SecretClient(vaultUri: new Uri(keyVaultUrl), credential: new DefaultAzureCredential());
// Create a new secret using the secret client.
KeyVaultSecret secret = client.SetSecret("secret-name", "secret-value");
// Retrieve a secret using the secret client.
secret = client.GetSecret("secret-name");
A KeyVaultSecret
is the fundamental resource within Azure Key Vault. From a developer's perspective, Key Vault APIs accept and return secret values as strings.
A SecretClient
provides both synchronous and asynchronous operations in the SDK allowing for selection of a client based on an application's use case.
Once you've initialized a SecretClient
, you can interact with secrets in Key Vault.
The Azure.Security.KeyVault.Secrets package supports synchronous and asynchronous APIs.
The following section provides several code snippets using the above created client
, covering some of the most common Azure Key Vault secret service related tasks:
- Create a secret
- Retrieve a secret
- Update an existing secret
- Delete a secret
- Delete and purge a secret
- List Secrets
SetSecret
creates a KeyVaultSecret
to be stored in the Azure Key Vault. If a secret with the same name already exists, then a new version of the secret is created.
KeyVaultSecret secret = client.SetSecret("secret-name", "secret-value");
Console.WriteLine(secret.Name);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Value);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Properties.Version);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Properties.Enabled);
GetSecret
retrieves a secret previously stored in the Key Vault.
KeyVaultSecret secret = client.GetSecret("secret-name");
Console.WriteLine(secret.Name);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Value);
UpdateSecretProperties
updates a secret previously stored in the Key Vault. Only the attributes of the secret are updated. To update the value, call SecretClient.SetSecret
on a secret with the same name.
KeyVaultSecret secret = client.GetSecret("secret-name");
// Clients may specify the content type of a secret to assist in interpreting the secret data when its retrieved.
secret.Properties.ContentType = "text/plain";
// You can specify additional application-specific metadata in the form of tags.
secret.Properties.Tags["foo"] = "updated tag";
SecretProperties updatedSecretProperties = client.UpdateSecretProperties(secret.Properties);
Console.WriteLine(updatedSecretProperties.Name);
Console.WriteLine(updatedSecretProperties.Version);
Console.WriteLine(updatedSecretProperties.ContentType);
StartDeleteSecret
starts a long-running operation to delete a secret previously stored in the Key Vault.
You can retrieve the secret immediately without waiting for the operation to complete.
When soft-delete is not enabled for the Key Vault, this operation permanently deletes the secret.
DeleteSecretOperation operation = client.StartDeleteSecret("secret-name");
DeletedSecret secret = operation.Value;
Console.WriteLine(secret.Name);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Value);
You will need to wait for the long-running operation to complete before trying to purge or recover the secret.
You can do this by calling UpdateStatus
in a loop as shown below:
DeleteSecretOperation operation = client.StartDeleteSecret("secret-name");
// You only need to wait for completion if you want to purge or recover the secret.
// You should call `UpdateStatus` in another thread or after doing additional work like pumping messages.
while (!operation.HasCompleted)
{
Thread.Sleep(2000);
operation.UpdateStatus();
}
DeletedSecret secret = operation.Value;
client.PurgeDeletedSecret(secret.Name);
This example lists all the secrets in the specified Key Vault. The value is not returned when listing all secrets. You will need to call SecretClient.GetSecret
to retrieve the value.
Pageable<SecretProperties> allSecrets = client.GetPropertiesOfSecrets();
foreach (SecretProperties secretProperties in allSecrets)
{
Console.WriteLine(secretProperties.Name);
}
The asynchronous APIs are identical to their synchronous counterparts, but return with the typical "Async" suffix for asynchronous methods and return a Task
.
This example creates a secret in the Key Vault with the specified optional arguments.
KeyVaultSecret secret = await client.SetSecretAsync("secret-name", "secret-value");
Console.WriteLine(secret.Name);
Console.WriteLine(secret.Value);
Listing secrets does not rely on awaiting the GetPropertiesOfSecretsAsync
method, but returns an AsyncPageable<SecretProperties>
that you can use with the await foreach
statement:
AsyncPageable<SecretProperties> allSecrets = client.GetPropertiesOfSecretsAsync();
await foreach (SecretProperties secretProperties in allSecrets)
{
Console.WriteLine(secretProperties.Name);
}
When deleting a secret asynchronously before you purge it, you can await the WaitForCompletionAsync
method on the operation.
By default, this loops indefinitely but you can cancel it by passing a CancellationToken
.
DeleteSecretOperation operation = await client.StartDeleteSecretAsync("secret-name");
// You only need to wait for completion if you want to purge or recover the secret.
await operation.WaitForCompletionAsync();
DeletedSecret secret = operation.Value;
await client.PurgeDeletedSecretAsync(secret.Name);
When you interact with the Azure Key Vault secret client library using the .NET SDK, errors returned by the service correspond to the same HTTP status codes returned for REST API requests.
For example, if you try to retrieve a secret that doesn't exist in your Key Vault, a 404
error is returned, indicating Not Found
.
try
{
KeyVaultSecret secret = client.GetSecret("some_secret");
}
catch (RequestFailedException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
}
You will notice that additional information is logged, like the Client Request ID of the operation.
Message:
Azure.RequestFailedException : Service request failed.
Status: 404 (Not Found)
Content:
{"error":{"code":"SecretNotFound","message":"Secret not found: some_secret"}}
Headers:
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Microsoft-IIS/10.0
x-ms-keyvault-region: westus
x-ms-request-id: 625f870e-10ea-41e5-8380-282e5cf768f2
x-ms-keyvault-service-version: 1.1.0.866
x-ms-keyvault-network-info: addr=131.107.174.199;act_addr_fam=InterNetwork;
X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:02:11 GMT
Content-Length: 75
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Expires: -1
Several Key Vault Secrets client library samples are available to you in this GitHub repository. These samples provide example code for additional scenarios commonly encountered while working with Key Vault:
-
Sample1_HelloWorld.md - for working with Azure Key Vault, including:
- Create a secret
- Get an existing secret
- Update an existing secret
- Delete secret
-
Sample2_BackupAndRestore.md - contains the code snippets working with Key Vault secrets, including:
- Backup and recover a secret
-
Sample3_GetSecrets.md - example code for working with Key Vault secrets, including:
- Create secrets
- List all secrets in the Key Vault
- Update secrets in the Key Vault
- List versions of a specified secret
- Delete secrets from the Key Vault
- List deleted secrets in the Key Vault
- For more extensive documentation on Azure Key Vault, see the API reference documentation.
- For Keys client library see Keys client library.
- For Certificates client library see Certificates client library.
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