Get AWS SSO working with all the SDKs that don't understand it yet

⚠️ This tool has been folded into aws-sso-util, which includes more functionality. You can continue to use this package, but I won't be adding new features here.

Currently, AWS SSO support is implemented in the AWS CLI v2, but the capability to usage the credentials retrieved from AWS SSO by the CLI v2 has not been implemented in the various AWS SDKs. However, they all support the credential process system. This tool bridges the gap by implementing a credential process provider that understands the SSO credential retrieval and caching system. Once AWS implements the necessary support in the SDK for your favorite language, this tool will no longer be necessary.

If you try this and your tools still don't work with the credentials, you can get the credentials themselves using aws-export-credentials, which can also inject them as environment variables for your program.

Read this section to determine if the SDK in your language of choice has implemented support for AWS SSO.

• boto3 (the Python SDK) has added support for loading credentials cached by aws sso login as of version 1.14.0. However, it does not support initiating authentication. That is, if the credentials are expired, you have to use aws sso login to login again, and this of course means that you (and your users) need the AWS CLI v2 installed for your Python scripts to use AWS SSO credentials. aws-sso-credential-process does not have a dependency on AWS CLI v2 and supports initiating authentication.

1. You can install with pip on any platform, but I recommend you use pipx, which will let you install aws-sso-credential-process in an isolated virtualenv while linking the executables onto your $PATH. To install pipx:

Mac:

brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath

Other:

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath

2. Install the tool.

pipx install aws-sso-credential-process

3. Set up your .aws/config file for AWS SSO as normal (see step 6 for how to make this easier):

[profile my-sso-profile]

region = us-east-2
output = yaml

sso_start_url = https://something.awsapps.com/start
sso_region = us-east-2
sso_account_id = 123456789012
sso_role_name = MyLeastPrivilegeRole

4. Then, just add a credential_process entry to the profile, using the --profile flag with the same profile name (see step 6 for how to make this easier):

[profile my-sso-profile]

credential_process = aws-sso-credential-process --profile my-sso-profile

region = us-east-2
output = yaml

sso_start_url = https://something.awsapps.com/start
sso_region = us-east-2
sso_account_id = 123456789012
sso_role_name = MyLeastPrivilegeRole

5. You're done! Test it out:

aws sso login --profile my-sso-profile
python -c "import boto3; print(boto3.Session(profile_name='my-sso-profile').client('sts').get_caller_identity())"

NOTE: if you test it out with your favorite script or application and get something like NoCredentialProviders: no valid providers in chain., you may need to set the environment variable AWS_SDK_LOAD_CONFIG=1. The Go SDK, and applications built with the Go SDK (like Terraform) don't automatically use your .aws/config file.

6. Streamline the process. If you've got one main AWS SSO configuration, set up your .bashrc (or similar) like this:

export AWS_CONFIGURE_SSO_DEFAULT_SSO_START_URL=https://something.awsapps.com/start
export AWS_CONFIGURE_SSO_DEFAULT_SSO_REGION=us-east-2

Use aws-configure-sso-profile to set up your AWS SSO profiles. This will set up your profile as shown above interactively, including prompting you to select from available accounts and roles. It will look something like this:

$ aws-configure-sso-profile --profile my-sso-profile
SSO start URL [https://something.awsapps.com/start]:
SSO Region [us-east-2]:
Attempting to automatically open the SSO authorization page in your default browser.
If the browser does not open or you wish to use a different device to authorize this request, open the following URL:

https://device.sso.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/

Then enter the code:

ABCD-WXYZ
There are N AWS accounts available to you.
Using the account ID 123456789012
The only role available to you is: MyLeastPrivilegeRole
Using the role name "MyLeastPrivilegeRole"
CLI default client Region [None]: us-east-2
CLI default output format [None]: yaml

To use this profile, specify the profile name using --profile, as shown:

aws s3 ls --profile my-sso-profile

The aws-configure-sso-profile tool wraps aws configure sso to help you set up profiles in .aws/config; you can set the environment variables AWS_CONFIGURE_SSO_DEFAULT_SSO_START_URL and AWS_CONFIGURE_SSO_DEFAULT_SSO_REGION to set defaults for those values so you're not typing them all the time. The tool will set up the credential_process entry as well. Note that --profile is required (unlike aws configure sso).

The order of configuration matches the AWS CLI and SDKs: values from CLI parameters take precedence, followed by env vars, followed by settings in .aws/config.

The --profile parameter on aws-sso-credential-process doesn't work like the same parameter on the AWS CLI, and cannot be set from the environment; it's intended only to help make the credential_process entry in a profile more concise.

The most important thing to determine is whether or not you want to allow interactive authentication, which is off by default (so that the behavior is the same as the AWS CLI v2).

When interactive authentication is off, you need to use the CLI v2's aws sso login to login through AWS SSO. If you haven't logged in or your session has expired, the process will fail and interrupt whatever you're doing.

With interactive authentication turned on, the same functionality of aws sso login will be triggered automatically; a browser will pop up to prompt you to log in (or, if you're already logged in, it will prompt you to approve the login). This is useful when you're running scripts interactively, but bad for automated processes that are incapable of logging in.

Note that with interactive authentication off, you have to have the AWS CLI v2 installed, but with interactive authentication on, this dependency is eliminated.

To enable interactive authentication, the best way is to set AWS_SSO_INTERACTIVE_AUTH=true in your environment. This lets you control whether interactive auth is enabled for a given profile depending on the situation you're using it for. Otherwise, you can set sso_interactive_auth=true in your profile in .aws/config, or use the --interactive flag for the process. Note that you can use the --noninteractive flag to disable interactive auth even if the environment variable is set.

When setting up a profile using aws-configure-sso-profile, you can use --set-auth-interactive or --set-auth-noninteractive to fix that profile as either interactive or noninteractive, respectively.

Note that if you've got your profile set up as shown above, the AWS CLI v2 won't get interactive authentication, because it will natively use the profile configuration, skipping this tool as a credential process. If you really want interactive auth with the CLI, you could put the AWS SSO configuration information as parameters to the tool in the credential process directive, instead of directly in the profile, and then the CLI will use credential process as well, but I don't really recommend this route.

Setting the --debug flag or the env var AWS_SSO_CREDENTIAL_PROCESS_DEBUG=true will cause debug output to be sent to .aws/sso/aws-sso-credential-process-log.txt. Note that this file will contain your credentials, though these credentials are both short-lived and also cached within the same directory.

• .aws/config: sso_account_id
• env var: AWS_SSO_ACCOUNT_ID
• parameter: --account-id

• .aws/config: sso_role_name
• env var: AWS_SSO_ROLE_NAME
• parameter: --role-name

• .aws/config: sso_start_url
• env var: AWS_SSO_START_URL
• parameter: --start-url

• .aws/config: sso_region
• env var: AWS_SSO_REGION
• parameter: --region