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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [6.4] ›X-Pack APIs ›Security APIs

Create or update users API

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IMPORTANT: This documentation is no longer updated. Refer to Elastic's version policy and the latest documentation.

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 /_xpack/security/user/<username>

PUT /_xpack/security/user/<username>

Description

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When updating a user, you can update everything but its username and password. To change a user’s password, use the change password API.

For more information about the native realm, see Realms and Configuring a native realm.

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.

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.
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: [].

Authorization

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

Examples

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The following example creates a user jacknich:

POST /_xpack/security/user/jacknich
{
  "password" : "j@rV1s",
  "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.

{
  "user": {
    "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:j@rV1s http://localhost:9200/_cluster/health
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