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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [7.16] ›REST APIs ›Security APIs

Create or update users API

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Create or update users API

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Adds and updates users in the native realm. These users are commonly referred to as native users.

Request

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POST /_security/user/<username>

PUT /_security/user/<username>

Prerequisites

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  • To use this API, you must have at least the manage_security cluster privilege.

Description

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A password is required for adding a new user but is optional when updating an existing user. To change a user’s password without updating any other fields, use the change password API.

For more information about the native realm, see Realms and Native user authentication.

Path parameters

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username

(Required, string) An identifier for the user.

Usernames must be at least 1 and no more than 1024 characters. They can contain alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), spaces, punctuation, and printable symbols in the Basic Latin (ASCII) block. Leading or trailing whitespace is not allowed.

Query parameters

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refresh
(string) One of true, false, or wait_for. These values have the same meaning as in the Index API, but the default value for this API (Put User) is true.

Request body

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The following parameters can be specified in the body of a POST or PUT request:

enabled
(Boolean) Specifies whether the user is enabled. The default value is true.
email
(string) The email of the user.
full_name
(string) The full name of the user.
metadata
(object) Arbitrary metadata that you want to associate with the user.
password

(Required*, string) The user’s password. Passwords must be at least 6 characters long.

When adding a user, one of password or password_hash is required. When updating an existing user, the password is optional, so that other fields on the user (such as their roles) may be updated without modifying the user’s password.

password_hash

(string) A hash of the user’s password. This must be produced using the same hashing algorithm as has been configured for password storage. For more details, see the explanation of the xpack.security.authc.password_hashing.algorithm setting in User cache and password hash algorithms.

Using this parameter allows the client to pre-hash the password for performance and/or confidentiality reasons.

The password parameter and the password_hash parameter cannot be used in the same request.

roles
(Required, list) A set of roles the user has. The roles determine the user’s access permissions. To create a user without any roles, specify an empty list: [].

*Indicates that the setting is required in some, but not all situations.

Examples

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The following example creates a user jacknich:

POST /_security/user/jacknich
{
  "password" : "l0ng-r4nd0m-p@ssw0rd",
  "roles" : [ "admin", "other_role1" ],
  "full_name" : "Jack Nicholson",
  "email" : "jacknich@example.com",
  "metadata" : {
    "intelligence" : 7
  }
}

A successful call returns a JSON structure that shows whether the user has been created or updated.

{
  "created": true 
}

When an existing user is updated, created is set to false.

After you add a user, requests from that user can be authenticated. For example:

curl -u jacknich:l0ng-r4nd0m-p@ssw0rd http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health
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