Why client_id value is always the same?

[michalswi]

I am wonder why client_id value if I don't use specific Service Principal is always the same?
client_id=04b07795-8ddb-461a-bbee-02f9e1bf7b46
doesn't matter if I use az cli or terraform.

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• ID: 8bd8ccc8-1b24-1cf2-a244-0b619c80b0ba
• Version Independent ID: fe03e080-3af9-eaa3-54a3-ea5d94ccbfa0
• Content: azure.identity.DeviceCodeCredential class
• Content Source: docs-ref-autogen/azure-identity/azure.identity.DeviceCodeCredential.yml
• GitHub Login: @lmazuel
• Microsoft Alias: lmazuel

[chlowell]

client_id here is the ID of the Azure AD application the credential will authenticate users to, not a service principal (this document describes the relationship between applications and service principals). The value shown in the documentation is only the default; it is configurable:

# this credential will authenticate users to 04b07795-8ddb-461a-bbee-02f9e1bf7b46 (Azure CLI)
DeviceCodeCredential()

# this credential will authenticate users to MY_APPLICATION
DeviceCodeCredential(client_id=MY_APPLICATION)

[michalswi]

All I want to understand here is why if I don't specify my own client_id I will always have client_id with this specific value 04b07795-8ddb-461a-bbee-02f9e1bf7b46 so this value is the default value for Azure AD or what?

[chlowell]

As I wrote above, this is the client ID for the Azure CLI. The login page also points that out: "You're signing in to Microsoft Azure Cross-platform Command Line Interface on another device...". We use it as a default because Azure AD doesn't have a default--a user must authenticate to some specific application. The Azure CLI is a good default for us because we can assume it's registered in a user's tenant and has access to the APIs our clients use.