Create or update roles

  • POST also PUT /_security/role/{name}
Auth

The role management APIs are generally the preferred way to manage roles in the native realm, rather than using file-based role management. The create or update roles API cannot update roles that are defined in roles files. File-based role management is not available in Elastic Serverless.

More about defining roles

Required privileges

Cluster privileges manage_security

Path parameters

name string required

The name of the role that is being created or updated. On Elasticsearch Serverless, the role name must begin with a letter or digit and can only contain letters, digits and the characters '_', '-', and '.'. Each role must have a unique name, as this will serve as the identifier for that role.

Query parameters

refresh enum

If true (the default) then refresh the affected shards to make this operation visible to search, if wait_for then wait for a refresh to make this operation visible to search, if false then do nothing with refreshes.

Values: true false wait_for

Request body

applications object[]

A list of application privilege entries.

application string required

The name of the application to which this entry applies.

privileges string[] required

A list of strings, where each element is the name of an application privilege or action.

resources string[] required

A list resources to which the privileges are applied.

cluster union anyOf[]

A list of cluster privileges. These privileges define the cluster-level actions for users with this role.

Values: all cancel_task manage manage_api_key manage_behavioral_analytics manage_enrich manage_esql manage_index_templates manage_inference manage_ingest_pipelines manage_logstash_pipelines manage_ml
indices object[]

A list of indices permissions entries.

field_security object

The document fields that the owners of the role have read access to.

Reference
except union oneOf
One of: string[] or string
grant union oneOf
One of: string[] or string
names union string | string[] required

A list of indices (or index name patterns) to which the permissions in this entry apply.

privileges union anyOf[] required

The index level privileges that owners of the role have on the specified indices.

Values: all auto_configure create create_doc create_index create_view delete delete_index delete_view index maintenance manage manage_data_stream_lifecycle manage_view monitor none read read_view_metadata view_index_metadata write
query union oneOf

A search query that defines the documents the owners of the role have access to. A document within the specified indices must match this query for it to be accessible by the owners of the role.

One of:
metadata object

Optional metadata. Within the metadata object, keys that begin with an underscore (_) are reserved for system use.

run_as string[]

A list of users that the owners of this role can impersonate. Note: in Serverless, the run-as feature is disabled. For API compatibility, you can still specify an empty run_as field, but a non-empty list will be rejected.

Reference
description string

Optional description of the role descriptor

transient_metadata map string to object

Indicates roles that might be incompatible with the current cluster license, specifically roles with document and field level security. When the cluster license doesn’t allow certain features for a given role, this parameter is updated dynamically to list the incompatible features. If enabled is false, the role is ignored, but is still listed in the response from the authenticate API.

Response

application/json
role object required

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

created boolean required