CertificateCredential Class

Authenticates as a service principal using a certificate.

The certificate must have an RSA private key, because this credential signs assertions using RS256. See Microsoft Entra ID documentation for more information on configuring certificate authentication.

Inheritance

azure.identity._internal.client_credential_base.ClientCredentialBase

CertificateCredential

Constructor

CertificateCredential(tenant_id: str, client_id: str, certificate_path: str | None = None, **kwargs: Any)

Parameters

Name	Description
tenant_id Required	str ID of the service principal's tenant. Also called its "directory" ID.
client_id Required	str The service principal's client ID
certificate_path	str Optional path to a certificate file in PEM or PKCS12 format, including the private key. If not provided, certificate_data is required. Default value: None

Keyword-Only Parameters

Name	Description
authority	str Authority of a Microsoft Entra endpoint, for example "login.microsoftonline.com", the authority for Azure Public Cloud (which is the default). AzureAuthorityHosts defines authorities for other clouds.
certificate_data	bytes The bytes of a certificate in PEM or PKCS12 format, including the private key
password	str or bytes The certificate's password. If a unicode string, it will be encoded as UTF-8. If the certificate requires a different encoding, pass appropriately encoded bytes instead.
send_certificate_chain	bool If True, the credential will send the public certificate chain in the x5c header of each token request's JWT. This is required for Subject Name/Issuer (SNI) authentication. Defaults to False.
cache_persistence_options	TokenCachePersistenceOptions Configuration for persistent token caching. If unspecified, the credential will cache tokens in memory.
disable_instance_discovery	bool Determines whether or not instance discovery is performed when attempting to authenticate. Setting this to true will completely disable both instance discovery and authority validation. This functionality is intended for use in scenarios where the metadata endpoint cannot be reached, such as in private clouds or Azure Stack. The process of instance discovery entails retrieving authority metadata from https://login.microsoft.com/ to validate the authority. By setting this to True, the validation of the authority is disabled. As a result, it is crucial to ensure that the configured authority host is valid and trustworthy.
additionally_allowed_tenants	List[str] Specifies tenants in addition to the specified "tenant_id" for which the credential may acquire tokens. Add the wildcard value "*" to allow the credential to acquire tokens for any tenant the application can access.

Examples

Create a CertificateCredential.

   from azure.identity import CertificateCredential

   credential = CertificateCredential(
       tenant_id="<tenant_id>",
       client_id="<client_id>",
       certificate_path="<path to PEM/PKCS12 certificate>",
       password="<certificate password if necessary>",
   )

   # Certificate/private key byte data can also be passed directly
   credential = CertificateCredential(
       tenant_id="<tenant_id>",
       client_id="<client_id>",
       certificate_data=b"<cert data>",
   )

Methods

close
get_token	Request an access token for scopes. This method is called automatically by Azure SDK clients.
get_token_info	Request an access token for scopes. This is an alternative to get_token to enable certain scenarios that require additional properties on the token. This method is called automatically by Azure SDK clients.

close

close() -> None

get_token

Request an access token for scopes.

This method is called automatically by Azure SDK clients.

get_token(*scopes: str, claims: str | None = None, tenant_id: str | None = None, enable_cae: bool = False, **kwargs: Any) -> AccessToken

Parameters

Name	Description
scopes Required	str desired scopes for the access token. This method requires at least one scope. For more information about scopes, see https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/identity-platform/scopes-oidc.

Keyword-Only Parameters

Name	Description
claims	str additional claims required in the token, such as those returned in a resource provider's claims challenge following an authorization failure.
tenant_id	str optional tenant to include in the token request.
enable_cae	bool indicates whether to enable Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE) for the requested token. Defaults to False.

Returns

Type	Description
AccessToken	An access token with the desired scopes.

Exceptions

Type	Description
CredentialUnavailableError	the credential is unable to attempt authentication because it lacks required data, state, or platform support
ClientAuthenticationError	authentication failed. The error's message attribute gives a reason.

get_token_info

Request an access token for scopes.

This is an alternative to get_token to enable certain scenarios that require additional properties on the token. This method is called automatically by Azure SDK clients.

get_token_info(*scopes: str, options: TokenRequestOptions | None = None) -> AccessTokenInfo

Parameters

Name	Description
scopes Required	str desired scopes for the access token. This method requires at least one scope. For more information about scopes, see https://learn.microsoft.com/entra/identity-platform/scopes-oidc.

Keyword-Only Parameters

Name	Description
options	TokenRequestOptions A dictionary of options for the token request. Unknown options will be ignored. Optional.

Returns

Type	Description
<xref:AccessTokenInfo>	An AccessTokenInfo instance containing information about the token.

Exceptions

Type	Description
CredentialUnavailableError	the credential is unable to attempt authentication because it lacks required data, state, or platform support
ClientAuthenticationError	authentication failed. The error's message attribute gives a reason.