How to automatically refresh the azure access token using Django?

Question

I have a Django web app that connects to a mssql database on azure using a user assigned managed identity. The app use DefaultAzureCredential from azure.identity to get a azure token for the managed identity. However, after a while the token expires, the app cannot connect to the database anymore. How to automatically refresh the azure access token properly? My database config in setting.py is shown below. I tried several middleware approaches suggested by GPT4o, but all failed to refresh the token eventually.

def get_token():
    credential = DefaultAzureCredential(managed_identity_client_id = 'my-managed-identity-client-id')
    token = credential.get_token("https://database.windows.net/.default")
    return token.token
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'mssql',
        'NAME': 'my-db-name',
        'HOST': 'server-name',
        'PORT': '1433',
        "TOKEN": get_token(),
        'OPTIONS': {
            'driver': 'ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server',
        },
    }
}

Answer

Hello,

Perhaps this can assist:

class MicrosoftView(APIView):
    permission_classes = ()

    def post(self, request):
        headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + request.data.get('token')}
        r = requests.get('https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/', headers=headers)
        data = json.loads(r.text)
        print(data)

        if 'error' in data:
            content = {'message': 'Wrong Microsoft token / This Microsoft token is already expired.'}
            return Response(content, status.HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED)

        try:
            user = models.CustomUser.objects.get(email=data['userPrincipalName'])
        except models.CustomUser.DoesNotExist:
            content = {'message': 'Your account doesn\'t exist'}
            return Response(content, status.HTTP_403_FORBIDDEN)

        token = RefreshToken.for_user(user)  # Generate token without username & password
        response = {
            'username': user.username,
            'access_token': str(token.access_token),
            'refresh_token': str(token)
        }

        return Response(response)

Cited from https://www.reddit.com/r/django/comments/jixp7a/django_rest_framework_api_authentication_with/

If this is helpful please accept as answer or upvote.

Best regards,

Dillon Silzer, Director | Cloudaen.com | Cloudaen Computing Solutions

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How to automatically refresh the azure access token using Django?

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