Accessing credentials and profiles in an application

The preferred method for using credentials is to allow the AWS SDK for .NET to find and retrieve them for you, as described in Credential and profile resolution.

However, you can also configure your application to actively retrieve profiles and credentials, and then explicitly use those credentials when creating an AWS service client.

To actively retrieve profiles and credentials, use classes from the Amazon.Runtime.CredentialManagement namespace.

The following sections provide examples for these classes.

Examples for class CredentialProfileStoreChain

You can get credentials or profiles from the CredentialProfileStoreChain class by using the TryGetAWSCredentials or TryGetProfile methods. The ProfilesLocation property of the class determines the behavior of the methods, as follows:

Get credentials from the SDK Store or the shared AWS credentials file

This example shows you how to get credentials by using the CredentialProfileStoreChain class and then use the credentials to create an AmazonS3Client object. The credentials can come from the SDK Store or from the shared AWS credentials file at the default location.

This example also uses the Amazon.Runtime.AWSCredentials class.

var chain = new CredentialProfileStoreChain();
AWSCredentials awsCredentials;
if (chain.TryGetAWSCredentials("some_profile", out awsCredentials))
{
    // Use awsCredentials to create an Amazon S3 service client
    using (var client = new AmazonS3Client(awsCredentials))
    {
        var response = await client.ListBucketsAsync();
        Console.WriteLine($"Number of buckets: {response.Buckets.Count}");
    }
}

Get a profile from the SDK Store or the shared AWS credentials file

This example shows you how to get a profile by using the CredentialProfileStoreChain class. The credentials can come from the SDK Store or from the shared AWS credentials file at the default location.

This example also uses the CredentialProfile class.

var chain = new CredentialProfileStoreChain();
CredentialProfile basicProfile;
if (chain.TryGetProfile("basic_profile", out basicProfile))
{
    // Use basicProfile
}

Get credentials from a custom credentials file

This example shows you how to get credentials by using the CredentialProfileStoreChain class. The credentials come from a file that uses the AWS credentials file format but is at an alternate location.

This example also uses the Amazon.Runtime.AWSCredentials class.

var chain = new
    CredentialProfileStoreChain("c:\\Users\\sdkuser\\customCredentialsFile.ini");
AWSCredentials awsCredentials;
if (chain.TryGetAWSCredentials("basic_profile", out awsCredentials))
{
    // Use awsCredentials to create an AWS service client
}

Examples for classes SharedCredentialsFile and AWSCredentialsFactory

Create an AmazonS3Client by using the SharedCredentialsFile class

This examples shows you how to find a profile in the shared AWS credentials file, create AWS credentials from the profile, and then use the credentials to create an AmazonS3Client object. The example uses the SharedCredentialsFile class.

This example also uses the CredentialProfile class and the Amazon.Runtime.AWSCredentials class.

CredentialProfile basicProfile;
AWSCredentials awsCredentials;
var sharedFile = new SharedCredentialsFile();
if (sharedFile.TryGetProfile("basic_profile", out basicProfile) &&
    AWSCredentialsFactory.TryGetAWSCredentials(basicProfile, sharedFile, out awsCredentials))
{
    // use awsCredentials to create an Amazon S3 service client
    using (var client = new AmazonS3Client(awsCredentials, basicProfile.Region))
    {
        var response = await client.ListBucketsAsync();
        Console.WriteLine($"Number of buckets: {response.Buckets.Count}");
    }
}