Token Management APIs

The token API enables you to create and invalidate bearer tokens for access without requiring basic authentication.

Request

POST /_xpack/security/oauth2/token

DELETE /_xpack/security/oauth2/token

Description

The tokens are created by the Elasticsearch Token Service, which is automatically enabled when you configure TLS on the HTTP interface. See Encrypting Communications in Elasticsearch. Alternatively, you can explicitly enable the xpack.security.authc.token.enabled setting. When you are running in production mode, a bootstrap check prevents you from enabling the token service unless you also enable TLS on the HTTP interface.

The Get Token API takes the same parameters as a typical OAuth 2.0 token API except for the use of a JSON request body.

A successful Get Token API call returns a JSON structure that contains the access token, the amount of time (seconds) that the token expires in, the type, and the scope if available.

The tokens returned by the Get Token API have a finite period of time for which they are valid and after that time period, they can no longer be used. That time period is defined by the xpack.security.authc.token.timeout setting. For more information, see Token service settings.

If you want to invalidate a token immediately, you can do so by using the Delete Token API.

Request Body

The following parameters can be specified in the body of a POST request and pertain to creating a token:

grant_type
(string) The type of grant. Currently only the password grant type is supported.
password (required)
(string) The user’s password.
scope
(string) The scope of the token. Currently tokens are only issued for a scope of FULL regardless of the value sent with the request.
username (required)
(string) The username that identifies the user.

The following parameters can be specified in the body of a DELETE request and pertain to deleting a token:

token
(string) An access token.

Examples

To obtain a token, submit a POST request to the /_xpack/security/oauth2/token endpoint.

POST /_xpack/security/oauth2/token
{
  "grant_type" : "password",
  "username" : "test_admin",
  "password" : "x-pack-test-password"
}

The following example output contains the access token, the amount of time (in seconds) that the token expires in, and the type:

{
  "access_token" : "dGhpcyBpcyBub3QgYSByZWFsIHRva2VuIGJ1dCBpdCBpcyBvbmx5IHRlc3QgZGF0YS4gZG8gbm90IHRyeSB0byByZWFkIHRva2VuIQ==",
  "type" : "Bearer",
  "expires_in" : 1200
}

The token returned by this API can be used by sending a request with a Authorization header with a value having the prefix Bearer ` followed by the value of the `access_token.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer dGhpcyBpcyBub3QgYSByZWFsIHRva2VuIGJ1dCBpdCBpcyBvbmx5IHRlc3QgZGF0YS4gZG8gbm90IHRyeSB0byByZWFkIHRva2VuIQ==" http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health

If a token must be invalidated immediately, you can do so by submitting a DELETE request to /_xpack/security/oauth2/token. For example:

DELETE /_xpack/security/oauth2/token
{
  "token" : "dGhpcyBpcyBub3QgYSByZWFsIHRva2VuIGJ1dCBpdCBpcyBvbmx5IHRlc3QgZGF0YS4gZG8gbm90IHRyeSB0byByZWFkIHRva2VuIQ=="
}

A successful call returns a JSON structure that indicates whether the token has already been invalidated.

{
  "created" : true 
}

When a token has already been invalidated, created is set to false.