How to manage secrets

Added in Juju 3.0.2

This document shows how to use secrets in a charm – both when the charm is the secret owner as well as when it is merely an observer.

Secret owner charm

By its nature, the content in this section only applies to charm secrets.

Add and grant access to a secret

Before secrets, the owner charm might have looked as below:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.database_relation_joined, 
                               self._on_database_relation_joined)

    ...  # other methods and event handlers
   
    def _on_database_relation_joined(self, event: ops.RelationJoinedEvent):
        event.relation.data[self.app]['username'] = 'admin' 
        event.relation.data[self.app]['password'] = 'admin'  # don't do this at home

With secrets, this can be rewritten as:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.database_relation_joined,
                               self._on_database_relation_joined)

    ...  # other methods and event handlers

    def _on_database_relation_joined(self, event: ops.RelationJoinedEvent):
        content = {
            'username': 'admin',
            'password': 'admin',
        }
        secret = self.app.add_secret(content)
        secret.grant(event.relation)
        event.relation.data[self.app]['secret-id'] = secret.id

Note that:

  • We call add_secret on self.app (the application). That is because we want the secret to be owned by this application, not by this unit. If we wanted to create a secret owned by the unit, we’d call self.unit.add_secret instead.

  • The only data shared in plain text is the secret ID (a locator URI). The secret ID can be publicly shared. Juju will ensure that only remote apps/units to which the secret has explicitly been granted by the owner will be able to fetch the actual secret payload from that ID.

  • The secret needs to be granted to a remote entity (app or unit), and that always goes via a relation instance. By passing a relation to grant (in this case the event’s relation), we are explicitly declaring the scope of the secret – its lifetime will be bound to that of this relation instance.

Create a new secret revision

To create a new secret revision, the owner charm must call secret.set_content() and pass in the new payload:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):

    ... # as before

    def _rotate_webserver_secret(self, secret):
        content = secret.get_content()
        secret.set_content({
            'username': content['username'],              # keep the same username
            'password': _generate_new_secure_password(),  # something stronger than 'admin'
        })

This will inform Juju that a new revision is available, and Juju will inform all observers tracking older revisions that a new one is available, by means of a secret-changed hook.

Caution

If your charm creates new revisions, it must also add a handler for the secret-remove event, and call remove_revision in it. If not, old revisions will continually build up in the secret backend. See more: Remove a secret

Change the rotation policy or the expiration date of a secret

Typically you want to rotate a secret periodically to contain the damage from a leak, or to avoid giving hackers too much time to break the encryption.

A charm can configure a secret, at creation time, to have one or both of:

  • A rotation policy (weekly, monthly, daily, and so on).

  • An expiration date (for example, in two months from now).

Here is what the code would look like:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.secret_rotate,
                               self._on_secret_rotate)

    ...  # as before

    def _on_database_relation_joined(self, event: ops.RelationJoinedEvent):
        content = {
            'username': 'admin',
            'password': 'admin',
        }
        secret = self.app.add_secret(content,
            label='secret-for-webserver-app',
            rotate=SecretRotate.DAILY)

    def _on_secret_rotate(self, event: ops.SecretRotateEvent):
        # this will be called once per day.
        if event.secret.label == 'secret-for-webserver-app':
            self._rotate_webserver_secret(event.secret)

Or, for secret expiration:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.secret_expired,
                               self._on_secret_expired)

    ...  # as before

    def _on_database_relation_joined(self, event: ops.RelationJoinedEvent):
        content = {
            'username': 'admin',
            'password': 'admin',
        }
        secret = self.app.add_secret(content,
            label='secret-for-webserver-app',
            expire=datetime.timedelta(days=42))  # this can also be an absolute datetime

    def _on_secret_expired(self, event: ops.SecretExpiredEvent):
        # this will be called only once, 42 days after the relation-joined event.
        if event.secret.label == 'secret-for-webserver-app':
            self._rotate_webserver_secret(event.secret)

Remove a secret

To remove a secret (effectively destroying it for good), the owner needs to call secret.remove_all_revisions. Regardless of the logic leading to the decision of when to remove a secret, the code will look like some variation of the following:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    ...

    # called from an event handler
    def _remove_webserver_secret(self):
        secret = self.model.get_secret(label='secret-for-webserver-app')
        secret.remove_all_revisions()

After this is called, the observer charm will get a ModelError whenever it attempts to get the secret. In general, the presumption is that the observer charm will take the absence of the relation as indication that the secret is gone as well, and so will not attempt to get it.

Remove a single secret revision

Removing a single secret revision is a more common (and less drastic!) operation than removing all revisions. If your charm creates new revisions of secrets, it must implement a secret-remove handler that calls remove_revision.

Typically, the owner will remove a secret revision when it receives a secret-remove event – that is, when that specific revision is no longer tracked by any observer. If a secret owner did remove a revision while it was still being tracked by observers, they would get a ModelError when they tried to get the secret.

A typical implementation of the secret-remove event would look like:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):

    ...  # as before

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.secret_remove,
                               self._on_secret_remove)

    def _on_secret_remove(self, event: ops.SecretRemoveEvent):
        # All observers are done with this revision, remove it:
        event.remove_revision()

Revoke a secret

For whatever reason, the owner of a secret can decide to revoke access to the secret to a remote entity. That is done by calling secret.revoke, and is the inverse of secret.grant.

An example of usage might look like:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):

    ...  # as before

    # called from an event handler
    def _revoke_webserver_secret_access(self, relation):
        secret = self.model.get_secret(label='secret-for-webserver-app')
        secret.revoke(relation)

Just like when the owner granted the secret, we need to pass a relation to the revoke call, making it clear what scope this action is to be applied to.

Secret observer charm

This applies to both charm and user secrets, though for user secrets the story starts with the charm defining a configuration option of type secret, and the secret is not acquired through relation data but rather by the configuration option being set to the secret’s URI.

A secret owner charm is also an observer of the secret, so this applies to it too.

Start tracking the latest secret revision

Before secrets, the code in the secret observer charm may have looked something like this:

class MyWebserverCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.database_relation_changed,
                               self._on_database_relation_changed)

    ...  # other methods and event handlers

    def _on_database_relation_changed(self, event: ops.RelationChangedEvent):
        username = event.relation.data[event.app]['username']
        password = event.relation.data[event.app]['password']
        self._configure_db_credentials(username, password)

With secrets, the code would become:

class MyWebserverCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.database_relation_changed,
                               self._on_database_relation_changed)

    ...  # other methods and event handlers

    def _on_database_relation_changed(self, event: ops.RelationChangedEvent):
        secret_id = event.relation.data[event.app]['secret-id']
        secret = self.model.get_secret(id=secret_id)
        content = secret.get_content()
        self._configure_db_credentials(content['username'], content['password'])

Note that:

  • The observer charm gets a secret via the model (not its app/unit). Because it’s the owner who decides who the secret is granted to, the ownership of a secret is not an observer concern. The observer code can rightfully assume that, so long as a secret ID is shared with it, the owner has taken care to grant and scope the secret in such a way that the observer has the rights to inspect its contents.

  • The charm first gets the secret object from the model, then gets the secret’s content (a dict) and accesses individual attributes via the dict’s items.

Label the secrets you’re observing

Sometimes a charm will observe multiple secrets. In the secret-changed event handler above, you might ask yourself: How do I know which secret has changed? The answer lies with secret labels: a label is a charm-local name that you can assign to a secret. Let’s go through the following code:

class MyWebserverCharm(ops.CharmBase):

    ...  # as before

    def _on_database_relation_changed(self, event: ops.RelationChangedEvent):
        secret_id = event.relation.data[event.app]['secret-id']
        secret = self.model.get_secret(id=secret_id, label='database-secret')
        content = secret.get_content()
        self._configure_db_credentials(content['username'], content['password'])

    def _on_secret_changed(self, event: ops.SecretChangedEvent):
        if event.secret.label == 'database-secret':
            content = event.secret.get_content(refresh=True)
            self._configure_db_credentials(content['username'], content['password'])
        elif event.secret.label == 'my-other-secret':
            self._handle_other_secret_changed(event.secret)
        else:
            pass  # ignore other labels (or log a warning)

As shown above, when the web server charm calls get_secret it can specify an observer-specific label for that secret; Juju will attach this label to the secret at that point. Normally get_secret is called for the first time in a relation-changed event; the label is applied then, and subsequently used in a secret-changed event.

Labels are unique to the charm (the observer in this case): if you attempt to attach a label to two different secrets from the same application (whether it’s the on the observer side or the owner side) and give them the same label, the framework will raise a ModelError.

Whenever a charm receives an event concerning a secret for which it has set a label, the label will be present on the secret object exposed by the framework.

The owner of the secret can do the same. When a secret is added, you can specify a label for the newly-created secret:

class MyDatabaseCharm(ops.CharmBase):

    ...  # as before

    def _on_database_relation_joined(self, event: ops.RelationJoinedEvent):
        content = {
            'username': 'admin',
            'password': 'admin',
        }
        secret = self.app.add_secret(content, label='secret-for-webserver-app')
        secret.grant(event.relation)
        event.relation.data[event.unit]['secret-id'] = secret.id

If a secret has been labelled in this way, the charm can retrieve the secret object at any time by calling get_secret with the “label” argument. This way, a charm can perform any secret management operation even if all it knows is the label. The secret ID is normally only used to exchange a reference to the secret between applications. Within a single application, all you need is the secret label.

So, having labelled the secret on creation, the database charm could add a new revision as follows:

    def _rotate_webserver_secret(self):
        secret = self.model.get_secret(label='secret-for-webserver-app')
        secret.set_content(...)  # pass a new revision payload, as before

When to use labels

When should you use labels? A label is basically the secret’s name (local to the charm), so whenever a charm has, or is observing, multiple secrets you should label them. This allows you to distinguish between secrets, for example, in the SecretChangedEvent shown above.

Most charms that use secrets have a fixed number of secrets each with a specific meaning, so the charm author should give them meaningful labels like database-credential, tls-cert, and so on. Think of these as “pets” with names.

In rare cases, however, a charm will have a set of secrets all with the same meaning: for example, a set of TLS certificates that are all equally valid. In this case it doesn’t make sense to label them – think of them as “cattle”. To distinguish between secrets of this kind, you can use the Secret.unique_identifier property.

Note that Secret.id, despite the name, is not really a unique ID, but a locator URI. We call this the “secret ID” throughout Juju and in the original secrets specification – it probably should have been called “uri”, but the name stuck.

Peek at a new secret revision

Sometimes, before reconfiguring to use a new credential revision, the observer charm may want to peek at its contents (for example, to ensure that they are valid). Use peek_content for that:

    def _on_secret_changed(self, event: ops.SecretChangedEvent):
        content = event.secret.peek_content()
        if not self._valid_password(content.get('password')):
           logger.warning('Invalid credentials! Not updating to new revision.')
           return
        content = event.secret.get_content(refresh=True)
        ...

Start tracking a different secret revision

To update to a new revision, the web server charm will typically subscribe to the secret-changed event and call get_content with the “refresh” argument set (refresh asks Juju to start tracking the latest revision for this observer).

class MyWebserverCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        ...  # other setup
        self.framework.observe(self.on.secret_changed,
                               self._on_secret_changed)

    ...  # as before

    def _on_secret_changed(self, event: ops.SecretChangedEvent):
        content = event.secret.get_content(refresh=True)
        self._configure_db_credentials(content['username'], content['password'])

Write tests for your charm

Provide mocked secret content to your charm tests using ops.testing.Secret objects. For example:

state_in = testing.State(
    secrets={
        testing.Secret(
            tracked_content={'key': 'public'},
            latest_content={'key': 'public', 'cert': 'private'},
        )
    }
)

The only mandatory argument to Secret is the tracked_content dict: a str:str mapping representing the content of the revision. If there is a newer revision of the content than the one the unit that’s handling the event is tracking, then latest_content should also be provided - if it’s not, then Ops assumes that latest_content is the tracked_content. If there are other revisions of the content, simply don’t include them: the unit has no way of knowing about these.

In your charm tests, specify the access that units have been granted to the secret. There are three cases:

  • the secret is owned by this app but not this unit, in which case this charm can only manage it if we are the leader

  • the secret is owned by this unit, in which case this charm can always manage it (leader or not)

  • (default) the secret is not owned by this app nor unit, which means we can only view it (this includes user secrets)

Thus by default, the secret is not owned by this charm, but, implicitly, by some unknown ‘other charm’ (or a user), and that other has granted us view rights.

Note

If this charm does not own the secret, but also it was not granted view rights by the (remote) owner, you model this by not adding it to State.secrets! The presence of a Secret in State.secrets means, in other words, that the charm has view rights (otherwise, why would we put it there?). If the charm owns the secret, or is leader, it will also have manage rights on top of view ones.

To specify a secret owned by this unit (or app):

rel = testing.Relation('web')
state_in = testing.State(
    secrets={
        testing.Secret(
            {'key': 'private'},
            owner='unit',  # or 'app'
            # The secret owner has granted access to the "remote" app over some relation:
            remote_grants={rel.id: {'remote'}}
        )
    }
)

When handling the secret-expired and secret-remove events, the charm must remove the specified revision of the secret. For secret-remove, the revision will no longer be in the State, because it’s no longer in use (which is why the secret-remove event was triggered). To ensure that the charm is removing the secret, check the context for the history of secret removal:

class SecretCharm(ops.CharmBase):
    def __init__(self, framework: ops.Framework):
        super().__init__(framework)
        framework.observe(self.on.secret_remove, self._on_secret_remove)

    def _on_secret_remove(self, event: ops.SecretRemoveEvent):
        event.remove_revision()


ctx = testing.Context(SecretCharm)
secret = testing.Secret({'password': 'xxxxxxxx'}, owner='app')
old_revision = 42
state_out = ctx.run(
    ctx.on.secret_remove(secret, revision=old_revision),
    testing.State(leader=True, secrets={secret})
)
assert ctx.removed_secret_revisions == [old_revision]