Clear Cache API

The Clear Cache API evicts users from the user cache. You can completely clear the cache or evict specific users.

Request

POST _xpack/security/realm/<realms>/_clear_cache

POST _xpack/security/realm/<realms>/_clear_cache?usernames=<usernames>

Description

User credentials are cached in memory on each node to avoid connecting to a remote authentication service or hitting the disk for every incoming request. There are realm settings that you can use to configure the user cache. For more information, see Controlling the User Cache.

To evict roles from the role cache, see the Clear Roles Cache API.

Path Parameters

realms (required)
(list) A comma-separated list of the realms to clear.
usernames
(list) A comma-separated list of the users to clear from the cache. If you do not specify this parameter, the API evicts all users from the user cache.

Examples

For example, to evict all users cached by the file realm:

POST _xpack/security/realm/default_file/_clear_cache

To evict selected users, specify the usernames parameter:

POST _xpack/security/realm/default_file/_clear_cache?usernames=rdeniro,alpacino

To clear the caches for multiple realms, specify the realms as a comma-delimited list:

POST _xpack/security/realm/default_file,ldap1/_clear_cache