@azure/identity

What is @azure/identity?

The @azure/identity package provides Azure Active Directory token authentication support across the Azure SDK. It enables developers to authenticate with Azure services using various credentials and manage tokens.

What are @azure/identity's main functionalities?

DefaultAzureCredential

DefaultAzureCredential is a comprehensive credential chain that tries multiple methods of authentication, suitable for most Azure SDK clients.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require('@azure/identity');
const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

ClientSecretCredential

ClientSecretCredential authenticates with Azure AD using a client ID and secret. It's typically used for server-to-server authentication.

const { ClientSecretCredential } = require('@azure/identity');
const credential = new ClientSecretCredential(tenantId, clientId, clientSecret);

ManagedIdentityCredential

ManagedIdentityCredential allows an Azure service to authenticate to other Azure services using the managed identity of an Azure resource.

const { ManagedIdentityCredential } = require('@azure/identity');
const credential = new ManagedIdentityCredential();

EnvironmentCredential

EnvironmentCredential reads authentication details from environment variables and can be used for automated deployments or local development.

const { EnvironmentCredential } = require('@azure/identity');
const credential = new EnvironmentCredential();

InteractiveBrowserCredential

InteractiveBrowserCredential is used for applications that require interactive authentication by opening a default system browser.

const { InteractiveBrowserCredential } = require('@azure/identity');
const credential = new InteractiveBrowserCredential({ clientId: 'your-client-id' });

Other packages similar to @azure/identity

aws-sdk

The AWS SDK for JavaScript provides a similar set of functionalities for AWS services as @azure/identity does for Azure. It includes various authentication methods and credential management.

google-auth-library

Google's authentication library for Node.js offers OAuth2 client capabilities and other authentication features, similar to @azure/identity but for Google Cloud services.

passport-azure-ad

This is a collection of Passport strategies to help you integrate with Azure Active Directory. It's more focused on web app scenarios and differs from @azure/identity which is more general-purpose.

README

Azure Identity client library for JavaScript

The Azure Identity library provides Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) token authentication through a set of convenient TokenCredential implementations.

For examples of various credentials, see the Azure Identity examples page.

Key links:

• Source code
• Package (npm)
• API Reference Documentation
• Microsoft Entra ID documentation
• Samples

Getting started

Currently supported environments

• LTS versions of Node.js
• Latest versions of Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
  • Note: Among the different credentials exported in this library, InteractiveBrowserCredential is the only one supported in the browser.

For more information, see our support policy.

Install the package

Install Azure Identity with npm:

npm install --save @azure/identity

Prerequisites

• An Azure subscription.
• Optional: The Azure CLI and/or Azure PowerShell can also be useful for authenticating in a development environment and managing account roles.

When to use @azure/identity

The credential classes exposed by @azure/identity are focused on providing the most straightforward way to authenticate the Azure SDK clients locally, in your development environments, and in production. We aim for simplicity and reasonable support of the authentication protocols to cover most of the authentication scenarios possible on Azure. We're actively expanding to cover more scenarios. For a full list of the credentials offered, see the Credential Classes section.

All credential types provided by @azure/identity are supported in Node.js. For browsers, InteractiveBrowserCredential is the credential type to be used for basic authentication scenarios.

Most of the credential types offered by @azure/identity use the Microsoft Authentication Library for JavaScript (MSAL.js). Specifically, we use the v2 MSAL.js libraries, which use OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Flow with PKCE and are OpenID-compliant. While @azure/identity focuses on simplicity, the MSAL.js libraries, such as @azure/msal-common, @azure/msal-node, and @azure/msal-browser, are designed to provide robust support for the authentication protocols that Azure supports.

When to use something else

The @azure/identity credential types are implementations of @azure/core-auth's TokenCredential class. In principle, any object with a getToken method that satisfies getToken(scopes: string | string[], options?: GetTokenOptions): Promise<AccessToken | null> works as a TokenCredential. This means developers can write their own credential types to support authentication cases not covered by @azure/identity. To learn more, see Custom Credentials.

Though our credential types support many advanced cases, developers may want full control of the authentication protocol. For that use case, we recommend using Microsoft Authentication Library for JavaScript (MSAL.js) directly. You can read more through the following links:

• We portray some advanced use cases of @azure/identity on the Azure Identity Examples page.
  • There, we specifically have an Advanced Examples section.
  • We also have a section that shows how to Authenticate with MSAL directly.

For advanced authentication workflows in the browser, we have a section where we showcase how to use the @azure/msal-browser library directly to authenticate Azure SDK clients.

Authenticate the client in development environment

While we recommend using managed identity in your Azure-hosted application, it's typical for a developer to use their own account for authenticating calls to Azure services when debugging and executing code locally. There are several developer tools that can be used to perform this authentication in your development environment.

Authenticate via the Azure Developer CLI

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 auth login. For users running on a system with a default web browser, the Azure Developer CLI launches the browser to authenticate the user.

For systems without a default web browser, the azd auth login --use-device-code command uses the device code authentication flow.

Authenticate via the Azure CLI

Applications using the AzureCliCredential, whether directly or via the DefaultAzureCredential, can use the Azure CLI account to authenticate calls in the application when running locally.

To authenticate with the Azure CLI, run the command az login. For users running on a system with a default web browser, the Azure CLI launches the browser to authenticate the user.

For systems without a default web browser, the az login command uses the device code authentication flow. The user can also force the Azure CLI to use the device code flow rather than launching a browser by specifying the --use-device-code argument.

Authenticate via Azure PowerShell

Applications using the AzurePowerShellCredential, whether directly or via the DefaultAzureCredential, can use the account connected to Azure PowerShell to authenticate calls in the application when running locally.

To authenticate with Azure PowerShell, run the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet. By default, like the Azure CLI, Connect-AzAccount launches the default web browser to authenticate a user account.

If interactive authentication can't be supported in the session, then the -UseDeviceAuthentication argument forces the cmdlet to use a device code authentication flow instead, similar to the corresponding option in the Azure CLI credential.

Authenticate via Visual Studio Code

Developers using Visual Studio Code can use the Azure Account extension to authenticate via the editor. Apps using 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.

Additionally, use the @azure/identity-vscode plugin package. This package provides the dependencies of VisualStudioCodeCredential and enables it. See Plugins.

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.

Authenticate the client in browsers

To authenticate Azure SDK clients within web browsers, we offer the InteractiveBrowserCredential, which can be set to use redirection or popups to complete the authentication flow. It's necessary to create an Azure App Registration in the Azure portal for your web application first.

Key concepts

If this is your first time using @azure/identity or Microsoft Entra ID, read Using @azure/identity with Microsoft Entra ID first. This document provides a deeper understanding of the platform and how to configure your Azure account correctly.

Credentials

A credential is a class that contains or can obtain the data needed for a service client to authenticate requests. Service clients across the Azure SDK accept credentials when they're constructed. Service clients use those credentials to authenticate requests to the service.

The Azure Identity library focuses on OAuth authentication with Microsoft Entra ID, and it offers various credential classes capable of acquiring a Microsoft Entra token to authenticate service requests. All of the credential classes in this library are implementations of the TokenCredential abstract class, and any of them can be used by to construct service clients capable of authenticating with a TokenCredential.

See Credential Classes.

DefaultAzureCredential

DefaultAzureCredential is appropriate for most scenarios where the application is intended to ultimately be run in Azure. This is because DefaultAzureCredential combines credentials commonly used to authenticate when deployed with credentials used to authenticate in a development environment.

Note: DefaultAzureCredential is intended to simplify getting started with the SDK 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.

If used from Node.js, DefaultAzureCredential attempts to authenticate via the following mechanisms in order:

1. Environment - DefaultAzureCredential reads account information specified via environment variables and uses it to authenticate.
2. Workload Identity - If the application is deployed to Azure Kubernetes Service with Managed Identity enabled, DefaultAzureCredential authenticates with it.
3. Managed Identity - If the application is deployed to an Azure host with Managed Identity enabled, DefaultAzureCredential authenticates with that account.
4. Azure CLI - If the developer authenticated an account via the Azure CLI az login command, DefaultAzureCredential authenticates with that account.
5. Azure PowerShell - If the developer authenticated using the Azure PowerShell module Connect-AzAccount command, DefaultAzureCredential authenticates with that account.
6. Azure Developer CLI - If the developer authenticated an account via the Azure Developer CLI azd auth login command, DefaultAzureCredential authenticates with that account.

Continuation policy

As of version 3.3.0, DefaultAzureCredential attempts to authenticate with all developer credentials until one succeeds, regardless of any errors previous developer credentials experienced. For example, a developer credential may attempt to get a token and fail, so DefaultAzureCredential continues to the next credential in the flow. Deployed service credentials stop the flow with a thrown exception if they're able to attempt token retrieval, but don't receive one.

This allows for trying all of the developer credentials on your machine while having predictable deployed behavior.

Note about VisualStudioCodeCredential

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.

Plugins

Azure Identity for JavaScript provides a plugin API that allows us to provide certain functionality through separate plugin packages. The @azure/identity package exports a top-level function (useIdentityPlugin) that can be used to enable a plugin. We provide two plugin packages:

• @azure/identity-broker, which provides brokered authentication support through a native broker, such as Web Account Manager.
• @azure/identity-cache-persistence, which provides persistent token caching in Node.js using a native secure storage system provided by your operating system. This plugin allows cached access_token values to persist across sessions, meaning that an interactive login flow doesn't need to be repeated as long as a cached token is available.

Examples

You can find more examples of using various credentials in Azure Identity Examples Page

Authenticate with DefaultAzureCredential

This example demonstrates authenticating the KeyClient from the @azure/keyvault-keys client library using DefaultAzureCredential.

// The default credential first checks environment variables for configuration as described above.
// If environment configuration is incomplete, it will try managed identity.

// Azure Key Vault service to use
import { KeyClient } from "@azure/keyvault-keys";

// Azure authentication library to access Azure Key Vault
import { DefaultAzureCredential } from "@azure/identity";

// Azure SDK clients accept the credential as a parameter
const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

// Create authenticated client
const client = new KeyClient(vaultUrl, credential);

Specify a user-assigned managed identity with DefaultAzureCredential

A relatively common scenario involves authenticating using a user-assigned managed identity for an Azure resource. Explore the example on Authenticating a user-assigned managed identity with DefaultAzureCredential to see how this is made a relatively straightforward task that can be configured using environment variables or in code.

Define a custom authentication flow with ChainedTokenCredential

While DefaultAzureCredential is generally the quickest way to get started developing applications for Azure, more advanced users may want to customize the credentials considered when authenticating. The ChainedTokenCredential enables users to combine multiple credential instances to define a customized chain of credentials. This example demonstrates creating a ChainedTokenCredential that attempts to authenticate using two differently configured instances of ClientSecretCredential, to then authenticate the KeyClient from the @azure/keyvault-keys:

import { ClientSecretCredential, ChainedTokenCredential } from "@azure/identity";

// When an access token is requested, the chain will try each
// credential in order, stopping when one provides a token
const firstCredential = new ClientSecretCredential(tenantId, clientId, clientSecret);
const secondCredential = new ClientSecretCredential(tenantId, anotherClientId, anotherSecret);
const credentialChain = new ChainedTokenCredential(firstCredential, secondCredential);

// The chain can be used anywhere a credential is required
import { KeyClient } from "@azure/keyvault-keys";
const client = new KeyClient(vaultUrl, credentialChain);

Managed identity support

The Managed identity authentication is supported via either the DefaultAzureCredential or the ManagedIdentityCredential credential classes 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

For examples of how to use managed identity for authentication, see the examples.

Cloud configuration

Credentials default to authenticating to the Microsoft Entra endpoint for Azure Public Cloud. To access resources in other clouds, such as Azure Government or a private cloud, configure credentials with the authorityHost argument in the constructor. The AzureAuthorityHosts enum defines authorities for well-known clouds. For the US Government cloud, you could instantiate a credential this way:

import { AzureAuthorityHosts, ClientSecretCredential } from "@azure/identity";
const credential = new ClientSecretCredential(
  "<YOUR_TENANT_ID>",
  "<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>",
  "<YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET>",
  {
    authorityHost: AzureAuthorityHosts.AzureGovernment,
  }
);

As an alternative to specifying the authorityHost argument, you can also set the AZURE_AUTHORITY_HOST environment variable to the URL of your cloud's authority. This approach is useful when configuring multiple credentials to authenticate to the same cloud or when the deployed environment needs to define the target cloud:

AZURE_AUTHORITY_HOST=https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn

The AzureAuthorityHosts enum defines authorities for well-known clouds for your convenience; however, if the authority for your cloud isn't listed in AzureAuthorityHosts, you may pass any valid authority URL as a string argument. For example:

import { AzureAuthorityHosts, ClientSecretCredential } from "@azure/identity";
const credential = new ClientSecretCredential(
  "<YOUR_TENANT_ID>",
  "<YOUR_CLIENT_ID>",
  "<YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET>",
  {
    authorityHost: "https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn",
  }
);

Not all credentials require this configuration. Credentials that authenticate through a development tool, such as AzureCliCredential, use that tool's configuration. Similarly, VisualStudioCodeCredential accepts an authorityHost argument but defaults to the authorityHost matching Visual Studio Code's Azure: Cloud setting.

Credential classes

Credential chains

Credential	Usage	Example
DefaultAzureCredential	Provides a simplified authentication experience to quickly start developing applications run in Azure.	example
ChainedTokenCredential	Allows users to define custom authentication flows composing multiple credentials.	example

Authenticate Azure-hosted applications

Credential	Usage	Example
EnvironmentCredential	Authenticates a service principal or user via credential information specified in environment variables.	example
ManagedIdentityCredential	Authenticates the managed identity of an Azure resource.	example
WorkloadIdentityCredential	Supports Microsoft Entra Workload ID on Kubernetes.	example

Authenticate service principals

Credential	Usage	Example	Reference
AzurePipelinesCredential	Supports Microsoft Entra Workload ID on Azure Pipelines.	example
ClientAssertionCredential	Authenticates a service principal using a signed client assertion.	example	Service principal authentication
ClientCertificateCredential	Authenticates a service principal using a certificate.	example	Service principal authentication
ClientSecretCredential	Authenticates a service principal using a secret.	example	Service principal authentication

Authenticate users

Credential	Usage	Example	Reference
AuthorizationCodeCredential	Authenticates a user with a previously obtained authorization code.	example	OAuth2 authentication code
DeviceCodeCredential	Interactively authenticates a user on devices with limited UI.	example	Device code authentication
InteractiveBrowserCredential	Interactively authenticates a user with the default system browser. Read more about how this happens here.	example	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.	example	Username + password authentication

Authenticate via development tools

Credential	Usage	Example	Reference
AzureCliCredential	Authenticate in a development environment with the Azure CLI.	example	Azure CLI authentication
AzureDeveloperCliCredential	Authenticate in a development environment with the enabled user or service principal in Azure Developer CLI.		Azure Developer CLI Reference
AzurePowerShellCredential	Authenticate in a development environment using Azure PowerShell.	example	Azure PowerShell authentication
VisualStudioCodeCredential	Authenticates as the user signed in to the Visual Studio Code Azure Account extension.		VS Code Azure Account extension

Environment variables

DefaultAzureCredential and EnvironmentCredential can be configured with environment variables. Each type of authentication requires values for specific variables.

Service principal with secret

Variable name	Value
AZURE_CLIENT_ID	ID of a Microsoft Entra application
AZURE_TENANT_ID	ID of the application's Microsoft Entra tenant
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET	one of the application's client secrets

Service principal with certificate

Variable name	Value
AZURE_CLIENT_ID	ID of a Microsoft Entra application
AZURE_TENANT_ID	ID of the application's Microsoft Entra tenant
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PATH	path to a PEM-encoded certificate file including private key
AZURE_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD	(optional) password of the certificate file, if any
AZURE_CLIENT_SEND_CERTIFICATE_CHAIN	(optional) send certificate chain in x5c header to support subject name / issuer-based authentication

Username and password

Variable name	Value
AZURE_CLIENT_ID	ID of a Microsoft Entra application
AZURE_TENANT_ID	ID of the application's Microsoft Entra tenant
AZURE_USERNAME	a username (usually an email address)
AZURE_PASSWORD	that user's password

Configuration is attempted in the preceding order. For example, if values for a client secret and certificate are both present, the client secret is used.

Continuous Access Evaluation

As of version 3.3.0, accessing resources protected by Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) is possible on a per-request basis. This can be enabled using the GetTokenOptions.enableCae(boolean) API. CAE isn't supported for developer credentials.

Token caching

Token caching is a feature provided by the Azure Identity library that allows apps to:

• Cache tokens in memory (default) and on disk (opt-in).
• Improve resilience and performance.
• Reduce the number of requests made to Microsoft Entra ID to obtain access tokens.

The Azure Identity library offers both in-memory and persistent disk caching. For more information, see the token caching documentation.

Brokered authentication

An authentication broker is an application that runs on a user’s machine and manages the authentication handshakes and token maintenance for connected accounts. Currently, only the Windows Web Account Manager (WAM) is supported. To enable support, use the @azure/identity-broker package. For details on authenticating using WAM, see the broker plugin documentation.

Troubleshooting

For assistance with troubleshooting, see the troubleshooting guide.

Next steps

Read the documentation

API documentation for this library can be found on our documentation site.

Client library support

Client and management libraries listed on the Azure SDK releases page that support Microsoft Entra authentication accept credentials from this library. Learn more about using these libraries in their documentation, which is linked from the releases page.

Known issues

Azure AD B2C support

This library doesn't support the Azure AD B2C service.

For other open issues, see the library's GitHub repository.

Provide feedback

If you encounter bugs or have suggestions, open an issue.

Contributing

To contribute to this library, read the contributing guide to learn more about how to build and test the code.