Public preview: Identity-based connections in Azure Functions with latest Azure SDK triggers and bindings
Published date: June 03, 2021
Azure Functions now offers a new set of preview extensions for several of its triggers and bindings:
These preview versions are built with the latest Azure SDKs for each service. They provide a number of improvements to apps of any language, and .NET apps can also take advantage of the latest types exposed by the Azure SDK.
Apps can also now begin to leverage identities instead of connection string secrets. When hosted in Azure, triggers and bindings from the new extensions, as well as the AzureWebJobsStorage connection, can rely on a managed identity that has been configured for the app. When you run the project locally, Functions will instead rely on the Azure account you used to sign into local tooling such as Visual Studio Code or the Azure CLI. In addition, you can run your Azure Functions from a package file using identities.
These identity-based connections allow you to eliminate secrets from the configuration of your function apps. This gives you one less thing to manage and offers better control over access to your data. For any places where your app still need secrets, you can always rely on Key Vault references, but these updates will reduce the need for secrets in many common Functions scenarios.
Learn more about Identity-based connections in the Functions developer guide.