Azure SDK for Go

azure-sdk-for-go provides Go packages for managing and using Azure services. It is continuously tested with Go 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 and master.

To be notified about updates and changes, subscribe to the Azure update feed.

Users may prefer to jump right in to our samples repo at github.com/Azure-Samples/azure-sdk-for-go-samples.

Package Updates

Most packages in the SDK are generated from Azure API specs using Azure/autorest.go and Azure/autorest. These generated packages depend on the HTTP client implemented at Azure/go-autorest.

The SDK codebase adheres to semantic versioning and thus avoids breaking changes other than at major (x.0.0) releases. Because Azure's APIs are updated frequently, we release a new major version at the end of each month with a full changelog. For more details and background see SDK Update Practices.

To more reliably manage dependencies like the Azure SDK in your applications we recommend golang/dep.

Packages that are still in public preview can be found under the ./services/preview directory. Please be aware that since these packages are in preview they are subject to change, including breaking changes outside of a major semver bump.

Other Azure Go Packages

Azure provides several other packages for using services from Go, listed below. If a package you need isn't available please open an issue and let us know.

Service	Import Path/Repo
Storage - Blobs	github.com/Azure/azure-storage-blob-go
Storage - Files	github.com/Azure/azure-storage-file-go
Storage - Queues	github.com/Azure/azure-storage-queue-go
Service Bus	github.com/Azure/azure-service-bus-go
Event Hubs	github.com/Azure/azure-event-hubs-go
Application Insights	github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-go

Install and Use:

Install

$ go get -u github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/...

or if you use dep, within your repo run:

$ dep ensure -add github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go

If you need to install Go, follow the official instructions.

Use

For many more scenarios and examples see Azure-Samples/azure-sdk-for-go-samples.

Apply the following general steps to use packages in this repo. For more on authentication and the Authorizer interface see the next section.

1. Import a package from the services directory.
2. Create and authenticate a client with a New*Client func, e.g. c := compute.NewVirtualMachinesClient(...).
3. Invoke API methods using the client, e.g. res, err := c.CreateOrUpdate(...).
4. Handle responses and errors.

For example, to create a new virtual network (substitute your own values for strings in angle brackets):

package main

import (
	"context"
	"github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/network/mgmt/2017-09-01/network"

	"github.com/Azure/go-autorest/autorest/azure/auth"
	"github.com/Azure/go-autorest/autorest/to"
)

func main() {
	// create a VirtualNetworks client
	vnetClient := network.NewVirtualNetworksClient("<subscriptionID>")

	// create an authorizer from env vars or Azure Managed Service Idenity
	authorizer, err := auth.NewAuthorizerFromEnvironment()
	if err == nil {
		vnetClient.Authorizer = authorizer
	}

	// call the VirtualNetworks CreateOrUpdate API
	vnetClient.CreateOrUpdate(context.Background(),
		"<resourceGroupName>",
		"<vnetName>",
		network.VirtualNetwork{
			Location: to.StringPtr("<azureRegion>"),
			VirtualNetworkPropertiesFormat: &network.VirtualNetworkPropertiesFormat{
				AddressSpace: &network.AddressSpace{
					AddressPrefixes: &[]string{"10.0.0.0/8"},
				},
				Subnets: &[]network.Subnet{
					{
						Name: to.StringPtr("<subnet1Name>"),
						SubnetPropertiesFormat: &network.SubnetPropertiesFormat{
							AddressPrefix: to.StringPtr("10.0.0.0/16"),
						},
					},
					{
						Name: to.StringPtr("<subnet2Name>"),
						SubnetPropertiesFormat: &network.SubnetPropertiesFormat{
							AddressPrefix: to.StringPtr("10.1.0.0/16"),
						},
					},
				},
			},
		})
}

Authentication

Typical SDK operations must be authenticated and authorized. The Authorizer interface allows use of any auth style in requests, such as inserting an OAuth2 Authorization header and bearer token received from Azure AD.

The SDK itself provides a simple way to get an authorizer which first checks for OAuth client credentials in environment variables and then falls back to Azure's Managed Service Identity when available, e.g. when on an Azure VM. The following snippet from the previous section demonstrates this helper.

import github.com/Azure/go-autorest/autorest/azure/auth

// create a VirtualNetworks client
vnetClient := network.NewVirtualNetworksClient("<subscriptionID>")

// create an authorizer from env vars or Azure Managed Service Idenity
authorizer, err := auth.NewAuthorizerFromEnvironment()
if err == nil {
    vnetClient.Authorizer = authorizer
}

// call the VirtualNetworks CreateOrUpdate API
vnetClient.CreateOrUpdate(context.Background(),
// ...

The following environment variables help determine authentication configuration:

• AZURE_ENVIRONMENT: Specifies the Azure Environment to use. If not set, it defaults to AzurePublicCloud. Not applicable to authentication with Managed Service Identity (MSI).
• AZURE_AD_RESOURCE: Specifies the AAD resource ID to use. If not set, it defaults to ResourceManagerEndpoint for operations with Azure Resource Manager. You can also choose an alternate resource programatically with auth.NewAuthorizerFromEnvironmentWithResource(resource string).

More Authentication Details

The previous is the first and most recommended of several authentication options offered by the SDK because it allows seamless use of both service principals and Azure Managed Service Identity. Other options are listed below.

Note: If you need to create a new service principal, run az ad sp create-for-rbac -n "<app_name>" in the azure-cli. See these docs for more info. Copy the new principal's ID, secret, and tenant ID for use in your app, or consider the --sdk-auth parameter for serialized output.

• The auth.NewAuthorizerFromEnvironment() described above creates an authorizer from the first available of the following configuration:

  1. **Client Credentials**: Azure AD Application ID and Secret.
  
      - `AZURE_TENANT_ID`: Specifies the Tenant to which to authenticate.
      - `AZURE_CLIENT_ID`: Specifies the app client ID to use.
      - `AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET`: Specifies the app secret to use.
  
  2. **Client Certificate**: Azure AD Application ID and X.509 Certificate.
  
      - `AZURE_TENANT_ID`: Specifies the Tenant to which to authenticate.
      - `AZURE_CLIENT_ID`: Specifies the app client ID to use.
      - `AZURE_CERTIFICATE_PATH`: Specifies the certificate Path to use.
      - `AZURE_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD`: Specifies the certificate password to use.
  
  3. **Resource Owner Password**: Azure AD User and Password. This grant type is *not
     recommended*, use device login instead if you need interactive login.
  
      - `AZURE_TENANT_ID`: Specifies the Tenant to which to authenticate.
      - `AZURE_CLIENT_ID`: Specifies the app client ID to use.
      - `AZURE_USERNAME`: Specifies the username to use.
      - `AZURE_PASSWORD`: Specifies the password to use.
  
  4. **Azure Managed Service Identity**: Delegate credential management to the
     platform. Requires that code is running in Azure, e.g. on a VM. All
     configuration is handled by Azure. See [Azure Managed Service
     Identity](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/msi-overview)
     for more details.
  

• The auth.NewAuthorizerFromFile() method creates an authorizer using credentials from an auth file created by the Azure CLI. Follow these steps to utilize:

  1. Create a service principal and output an auth file using az ad sp create-for-rbac --sdk-auth > client_credentials.json.
  2. Set environment variable AZURE_AUTH_LOCATION to the path of the saved output file.
  3. Use the authorizer returned by auth.NewAuthorizerFromFile() in your client as described above.

• The auth.NewAuthorizerFromCLI() method creates an authorizer which uses Azure CLI to obtain its credentials. To use this method follow these steps:

  1. Install Azure CLI v2.0.12 or later. Upgrade earlier versions.
  2. Use az login to sign in to Azure.

  If you receive an error, use az account get-access-token to verify access.

  If Azure CLI is not installed to the default directory, you may receive an error reporting that az cannot be found.
  Use the AzureCLIPath environment variable to define the Azure CLI installation folder.

  If you are signed in to Azure CLI using multiple accounts or your account has access to multiple subscriptions, you need to specify the specific subscription to be used. To do so, use:

  az account set --subscription <subscription-id>
  

  To verify the current account settings, use:

  az account list
  

• Finally, you can use OAuth's Device Flow by calling auth.NewDeviceFlowConfig() and extracting the Authorizer as follows:

  config := auth.NewDeviceFlowConfig(clientID, tenantID)
  a, err = config.Authorizer()

Versioning

azure-sdk-for-go provides at least a basic Go binding for every Azure API. To provide maximum flexibility to users, the SDK even includes previous versions of Azure APIs which are still in use. This enables us to support users of the most updated Azure datacenters, regional datacenters with earlier APIs, and even on-premises installations of Azure Stack.

SDK versions apply globally and are tracked by git tags. These are in x.y.z form and generally adhere to semantic versioning specifications.

Service API versions are generally represented by a date string and are tracked by offering separate packages for each version. For example, to choose the latest API versions for Compute and Network, use the following imports:

import (
    "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/compute/mgmt/2017-12-01/compute"
    "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/network/mgmt/2017-09-01/network"
)

Occasionally service-side changes require major changes to existing versions. These cases are noted in the changelog.

All available services and versions are listed under the services/ path in this repo and in GoDoc. Run find ./services -type d -mindepth 3 to list all available service packages.

Profiles

Azure API profiles specify subsets of Azure APIs and versions. Profiles can provide:

• stability for your application by locking to specific API versions; and/or
• compatibility for your application with Azure Stack and regional Azure datacenters.

In the Go SDK, profiles are available under the profiles/ path and their component API versions are aliases to the true service package under services/. You can use them as follows:

import "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/2017-03-09/compute/mgmt/compute"
import "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/2017-03-09/network/mgmt/network"
import "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/2017-03-09/storage/mgmt/storage"

The 2017-03-09 profile is the only one currently available and is for use in hybrid Azure and Azure Stack environments. More profiles are under development.

In addition to versioned profiles, we also provide two special profiles latest and preview. These always include the most recent respective stable or preview API versions for each service, even when updating them to do so causes breaking changes. That is, these do not adhere to semantic versioning rules.

The latest and preview profiles can help you stay up to date with API updates as you build applications. Since they are by definition not stable, however, they should not be used in production apps. Instead, choose the latest specific API version (or an older one if necessary) from the services/ path.

As an example, to automatically use the most recent Compute APIs, use one of the following imports:

import "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/latest/compute/mgmt/compute"
import "github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles/preview/compute/mgmt/compute"

Inspecting and Debugging

All clients implement some handy hooks to help inspect the underlying requests being made to Azure.

• RequestInspector: View and manipulate the go http.Request before it's sent
• ResponseInspector: View the http.Response received

Here is an example of how these can be used with net/http/httputil to see requests and responses.

vnetClient := network.NewVirtualNetworksClient("<subscriptionID>")
vnetClient.RequestInspector = LogRequest()
vnetClient.ResponseInspector = LogResponse()

...

func LogRequest() autorest.PrepareDecorator {
	return func(p autorest.Preparer) autorest.Preparer {
		return autorest.PreparerFunc(func(r *http.Request) (*http.Request, error) {
			r, err := p.Prepare(r)
			if err != nil {
				log.Println(err)
			}
			dump, _ := httputil.DumpRequestOut(r, true)
			log.Println(string(dump))
			return r, err
		})
	}
}

func LogResponse() autorest.RespondDecorator {
	return func(p autorest.Responder) autorest.Responder {
		return autorest.ResponderFunc(func(r *http.Response) error {
			err := p.Respond(r)
			if err != nil {
				log.Println(err)
			}
			dump, _ := httputil.DumpResponse(r, true)
			log.Println(string(dump))
			return err
		})
	}
}

Resources

• SDK docs are at godoc.org.
• SDK samples are at Azure-Samples/azure-sdk-for-go-samples.
• SDK notifications are published via the Azure update feed.
• Azure API docs are at docs.microsoft.com/rest/api.
• General Azure docs are at docs.microsoft.com/azure.

License

Apache 2.0, see LICENSE.

Contribute

See CONTRIBUTING.md.