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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Default authentication chain doesn't work on Databricks Apps","articleBody":"I am developing a Streamlit app for deployment to Databricks Apps. I am having trouble getting the same authentication flow to work both locally as well as on Databricks Apps.\n\nConsider the following snippet:\n\n```python\nfrom databricks import sql\n\nwith sql.connect(\n    server_hostname=host,\n    http_path=http_path,\n    catalog=catalog,\n) as connection:\n    with connection.cursor() as cursor:\n        cursor.execute(\"SELECT 1\")\n        result = cursor.fetchall()\n```\n\nThis works fine locally.\n\nHowever, when I deploy this to Databricks Apps, it just hangs forever.\n\nI figured out that to get this snippet to work on Databricks Apps, it needs this tweak:\n\n```python\nfrom databricks.sdk.core import Config\n\nwith sql.connect(\n    server_hostname=host,\n    http_path=http_path,\n    catalog=catalog,\n    credentials_provider=lambda: Config().authenticate,\n) as connection:\n    ...\n```\n\nThis works on Databricks Apps, but now when I try to run it locally I get a new error:\n\n```\nValueError: default auth: cannot configure default credentials, please check \nhttps://docs.databricks.com/en/dev-tools/auth.html#databricks-client-unified-authentication\nto configure credentials for your preferred authentication method.\n```\n\nOK great. I have one thing that works locally but not on Databricks Apps, and another that works the other way around.\n\nUsing [the tip shared here][1], I combined these into a hybrid approach that seems to work both locally and on Databricks Apps:\n\n```python\nfrom databricks.sdk.core import Config, databricks_cli\n\ndef universal_databricks_credentials_provider():\n    try:\n        return databricks_cli(Config(host=host))\n    except:\n        return Config().authenticate\n\nwith sql.connect(\n    server_hostname=host,\n    http_path=http_path,\n    catalog=catalog,\n    credentials_provider=universal_databricks_credentials_provider,\n) as connection:\n    ...\n```\n\nBut this is all very awkward and unpleasant.\n\nI think the default authentication chain that this library uses should work on Databricks Apps so that I don't have to specify `credentials_provider`.\n\n[1]: https://github.com/databricks/databricks-sql-python/issues/148#issuecomment-2271561365","author":{"url":"https://github.com/nchammas","@type":"Person","name":"nchammas"},"datePublished":"2025-07-23T20:13:05.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":1},"url":"https://github.com/651/databricks-sql-python/issues/651"}