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Azure Key Vault Certificates client library for JavaScript - version 4.9.0

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Azure Key Vault is a cloud service that provides secure storage and automated management of certificates used throughout a cloud application. Multiple certificates, and multiple versions of the same certificate, can be kept in the Azure Key Vault. Each certificate in the vault has a policy associated with it which controls the issuance and lifetime of the certificate, along with actions to be taken as certificates near expiry.

If you would like to know more about Azure Key Vault, you may want to review: What is Azure Key Vault?

Use the client library for Azure Key Vault Certificates in your Node.js application to:

  • Get, set and delete a certificate.
  • Update a certificate, its attributes, issuer, policy, operation and contacts.
  • Backup and restore a certificate.
  • Get, purge or recover a deleted certificate.
  • Get all the versions of a certificate.
  • Get all certificates.
  • Get all deleted certificates.

Note: This package cannot be used in the browser due to Azure Key Vault service limitations, please refer to this document for guidance.

Key links:

Getting started

Currently supported environments

Prerequisites

Install the package

Install the Azure Key Vault Certificates client library using npm

npm install @azure/keyvault-certificates

Install the identity library

Key Vault clients authenticate using the Azure Identity Library. Install it as well using npm

npm install @azure/identity

Configure TypeScript

TypeScript users need to have Node type definitions installed:

npm install @types/node

You also need to enable compilerOptions.allowSyntheticDefaultImports in your tsconfig.json. Note that if you have enabled compilerOptions.esModuleInterop, allowSyntheticDefaultImports is enabled by default. See TypeScript's compiler options handbook for more information.

Authenticating with Azure Active Directory

The Key Vault service relies on Azure Active Directory to authenticate requests to its APIs. The @azure/identity package provides a variety of credential types that your application can use to do this. The README for @azure/identity provides more details and samples to get you started.

In order to interact with the Azure Key Vault service, you will need to create an instance of the CertificateClient class, a vault url and a credential object. The examples shown in this document use a credential object named DefaultAzureCredential, which is appropriate for most scenarios, including local development and production environments. Additionally, we recommend using a managed identity for authentication in production environments.

You can find more information on different ways of authenticating and their corresponding credential types in the Azure Identity documentation.

Here's a quick example. First, import DefaultAzureCredential and CertificateClient:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

Once these are imported, we can next connect to the key vault service:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

// Build the URL to reach your key vault
const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

// Lastly, create our certificates client and connect to the service
const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

Key concepts

  • The Certificates client is the primary interface to interact with the API methods related to certificates in the Azure Key Vault API from a JavaScript application. Once initialized, it provides a basic set of methods that can be used to create, read, update and delete certificates.
  • A Certificate version is a version of a certificate in the Key Vault. Each time a user assigns a value to a unique certificate name, a new version of that certificate is created. Retrieving a certificate by a name will always return the latest value assigned, unless a specific version is provided to the query.
  • Soft delete allows Key Vaults to support deletion and purging as two separate steps, so deleted certificates are not immediately lost. This only happens if the Key Vault has soft-delete enabled.
  • A Certificate backup can be generated from any created certificate. These backups come as binary data, and can only be used to regenerate a previously deleted certificate.

Specifying the Azure Key Vault service API version

By default, this package uses the latest Azure Key Vault service version which is 7.1. The only other version that is supported is 7.0. You can change the service version being used by setting the option serviceVersion in the client constructor as shown below:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

// Change the Azure Key Vault service API version being used via the `serviceVersion` option
const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential, {
  serviceVersion: "7.0",
});

Examples

The following sections provide code snippets that cover some of the common tasks using Azure Key Vault Certificates. The scenarios that are covered here consist of:

Creating and setting a certificate

beginCreateCertificate creates a certificate to be stored in the Azure Key Vault. If a certificate with the same name already exists, a new version of the certificate is created.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  // Note: Sending `Self` as the `issuerName` of the certificate's policy will create a self-signed certificate.
  await client.beginCreateCertificate(certificateName, {
    issuerName: "Self",
    subject: "cn=MyCert",
  });
}

main();

Besides the name of the certificate and the policy, you can also pass the following properties in a third argument with optional values:

  • enabled: A boolean value that determines whether the certificate can be used or not.
  • tags: Any set of key-values that can be used to search and filter certificates.
const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

// Note: Sending `Self` as the `issuerName` of the certificate's policy will create a self-signed certificate.
const certificatePolicy = {
  issuerName: "Self",
  subject: "cn=MyCert",
};
const enabled = true;
const tags = {
  myCustomTag: "myCustomTagsValue",
};

async function main() {
  await client.beginCreateCertificate(certificateName, certificatePolicy, {
    enabled,
    tags,
  });
}

main();

Calling to beginCreateCertificate with the same name will create a new version of the same certificate, which will have the latest provided attributes.

Since Certificates take some time to get fully created, beginCreateCertificate returns a poller object that keeps track of the underlying Long Running Operation according to our guidelines: https://azure.github.io/azure-sdk/typescript_design.html#ts-lro

The received poller will allow you to get the created certificate by calling to poller.getResult(). You can also wait until the deletion finishes, either by running individual service calls until the certificate is created, or by waiting until the process is done:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";
const certificatePolicy = {
  issuerName: "Self",
  subject: "cn=MyCert",
};

async function main() {
  const poller = await client.beginCreateCertificate(certificateName, certificatePolicy);

  // You can use the pending certificate immediately:
  const pendingCertificate = poller.getResult();

  // Or you can wait until the certificate finishes being signed:
  const keyVaultCertificate = await poller.pollUntilDone();
  console.log(keyVaultCertificate);
}

main();

Another way to wait until the certificate is signed is to do individual calls, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");
const { delay } = require("@azure/core-util");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";
const certificatePolicy = {
  issuerName: "Self",
  subject: "cn=MyCert",
};

async function main() {
  const poller = await client.beginCreateCertificate(certificateName, certificatePolicy);

  while (!poller.isDone()) {
    await poller.poll();
    await delay(5000);
  }

  console.log(`The certificate ${certificateName} is fully created`);
}

main();

Getting a Key Vault certificate

The simplest way to read certificates back from the vault is to get a certificate by name. getCertificate will retrieve the most recent version of the certificate, along with the certificate's policy. You can optionally get a different version of the certificate by calling getCertificateVersion if you specify the version. getCertificateVersion does not return the certificate's policy.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  const latestCertificate = await client.getCertificate(certificateName);
  console.log(`Latest version of the certificate ${certificateName}: `, latestCertificate);
  const specificCertificate = await client.getCertificateVersion(
    certificateName,
    latestCertificate.properties.version
  );
  console.log(
    `The certificate ${certificateName} at the version ${latestCertificate.properties.version}: `,
    specificCertificate
  );
}

main();

Getting the full information of a certificate

Azure Key Vault's design makes sharp distinctions between Keys, Secrets and Certificates. The Key Vault service's Certificates features were designed making use of it's Keys and Secrets capabilities. Let's evaluate the composition of a Key Vault Certificate:

When a Key Vault certificate is created, an addressable key and secret are also created with the same name. The Key Vault key allows key operations and the Key Vault secret allows retrieval of the certificate value as a secret. A Key Vault certificate also contains public x509 certificate metadata. Source: Composition of a Certificate.

Knowing that the private key is stored in a Key Vault Secret, with the public certificate included, we can retrieve it by using the Key Vault Secrets client.

// Using the same credential object we used before,
// and the same keyVaultUrl,
// let's create a SecretClient
import { SecretClient } from "@azure/keyvault-secrets";

const secretClient = new SecretClient(keyVaultUrl, credential);

// Assuming you've already created a Key Vault certificate,
// and that certificateName contains the name of your certificate
const certificateSecret = await secretClient.getSecret(certificateName);

// Here we can find both the private key and the public certificate, in PKCS 12 format:
const PKCS12Certificate = certificateSecret.value!;

// You can write this into a file:
fs.writeFileSync("myCertificate.p12", PKCS12Certificate);

Note that, by default, the content type of the certificates is PKCS 12. By specifying the content type of your certificate, you'll be able to retrieve it in PEM format. Before showing how to create PEM certificates, let's first explore how to retrieve a PEM secret key from a PKCS 12 certificate first.

Using openssl, you can retrieve the public certificate in PEM format by using the following command:

openssl pkcs12 -in myCertificate.p12 -out myCertificate.crt.pem -clcerts -nokeys

You can also use openssl to retrieve the private key, as follows:

openssl pkcs12 -in myCertificate.p12 -out myCertificate.key.pem -nocerts -nodes

Note that in both cases, openssl will ask you for the password used to create the certificate. The sample code we've used so far hasn't specified a password, so you can append -passin 'pass:' to the end of each command.

Certificates in PEM format

If you want to work with certificates in PEM format, you can tell Azure's Key Vault service to create and manage your certificates in PEM format by providing the contentType property at the moment of creating the certificates.

The following example shows how to create and retrieve the public and the private parts of a PEM formatted certificate using the Key Vault clients for Certificates and Secrets:

// Creating the certificate
const certificateName = "MyCertificate";
const createPoller = await client.beginCreateCertificate(certificateName, {
  issuerName: "Self",
  subject: "cn=MyCert",
  contentType: "application/x-pem-file", // Here you specify you want to work with PEM certificates.
});
const keyVaultCertificate = await createPoller.pollUntilDone();

// Getting the PEM formatted private key and public certificate:
const certificateSecret = await secretClient.getSecret(certificateName);
const PEMPair = certificateSecret.value!;

console.log(PEMPair);

Keep in mind that your public certificate will be in the same blob of content as your private key. You can use the PEM headers to extract them accordingly.

List all certificates

listPropertiesOfCertificates will list all certificates in the Key Vault.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

async function main() {
  for await (let certificateProperties of client.listPropertiesOfCertificates()) {
    console.log("Certificate properties: ", certificateProperties);
  }
}

main();

Updating a certificate

The certificate attributes can be updated to an existing certificate version with updateCertificate, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  const result = await client.getCertificate(certificateName);
  await client.updateCertificateProperties(certificateName, result.properties.version, {
    enabled: false,
    tags: {
      myCustomTag: "myCustomTagsValue",
    },
  });
}

main();

The certificate's policy can also be updated individually with updateCertificatePolicy, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  const result = client.getCertificate(certificateName);
  // Note: Sending `Self` as the `issuerName` of the certificate's policy will create a self-signed certificate.
  await client.updateCertificatePolicy(certificateName, {
    issuerName: "Self",
    subject: "cn=MyCert",
  });
}

main();

Deleting a certificate

The beginDeleteCertificate method sets a certificate up for deletion. This process will happen in the background as soon as the necessary resources are available.

If soft-delete is enabled for the Key Vault, this operation will only label the certificate as a deleted certificate. A deleted certificate can't be updated. They can only be either read, recovered or purged.

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  const poller = await client.beginDeleteCertificate(certificateName);

  // You can use the deleted certificate immediately:
  const deletedCertificate = poller.getResult();

  // The certificate is being deleted. Only wait for it if you want to restore it or purge it.
  await poller.pollUntilDone();

  // You can also get the deleted certificate this way:
  await client.getDeletedCertificate(certificateName);

  // Deleted certificates can also be recovered or purged.

  // recoverDeletedCertificate returns a poller, just like beginDeleteCertificate.
  // const recoverPoller = await client.beginRecoverDeletedCertificate(certificateName);
  // await recoverPoller.pollUntilDone();

  // If a certificate is done and the Key Vault has soft-delete enabled, the certificate can be purged with:
  await client.purgeDeletedCertificate(certificateName);
}

main();

Since the deletion of a certificate won't happen instantly, some time is needed after the beginDeleteCertificate method is called before the deleted certificate is available to be read, recovered or purged.

Iterating lists of certificates

Using the CertificateClient, you can retrieve and iterate through all of the certificates in a Certificate Vault, as well as through all of the deleted certificates and the versions of a specific certificate. The following API methods are available:

  • listPropertiesOfCertificates will list all of your non-deleted certificates by their names, only at their latest versions.
  • listDeletedCertificates will list all of your deleted certificates by their names, only at their latest versions.
  • listPropertiesOfCertificateVersions will list all the versions of a certificate based on a certificate name.

Which can be used as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  for await (let certificateProperties of client.listPropertiesOfCertificates()) {
    console.log("Certificate properties: ", certificateProperties);
  }
  for await (let deletedCertificate of client.listDeletedCertificates()) {
    console.log("Deleted certificate: ", deletedCertificate);
  }
  for await (let certificateProperties of client.listPropertiesOfCertificateVersions(
    certificateName
  )) {
    console.log("Certificate properties: ", certificateProperties);
  }
}

main();

All of these methods will return all of the available results at once. To retrieve them by pages, add .byPage() right after invoking the API method you want to use, as follows:

const { DefaultAzureCredential } = require("@azure/identity");
const { CertificateClient } = require("@azure/keyvault-certificates");

const credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();

const vaultName = "<YOUR KEYVAULT NAME>";
const url = `https://${vaultName}.vault.azure.net`;

const client = new CertificateClient(url, credential);

const certificateName = "MyCertificateName";

async function main() {
  for await (let page of client.listPropertiesOfCertificates().byPage()) {
    for (let certificateProperties of page) {
      console.log("Certificate properties: ", certificateProperties);
    }
  }
  for await (let page of client.listDeletedCertificates().byPage()) {
    for (let deletedCertificate of page) {
      console.log("Deleted certificate: ", deletedCertificate);
    }
  }
  for await (let page of client.listPropertiesOfCertificateVersions(certificateName).byPage()) {
    for (let certificateProperties of page) {
      console.log("Properties of certificate: ", certificateProperties);
    }
  }
}

main();

Troubleshooting

Enabling logging may help uncover useful information about failures. In order to see a log of HTTP requests and responses, set the AZURE_LOG_LEVEL environment variable to info. Alternatively, logging can be enabled at runtime by calling setLogLevel in the @azure/logger:

import { setLogLevel } from "@azure/logger";

setLogLevel("info");

See our troubleshooting guide for details on how to diagnose various failure scenarios.

Next steps

You can find more code samples through the following links:

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute to this library, please read the contributing guide to learn more about how to build and test the code.

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