1.3.17. /db/_security

    Returns the current security object from the specified database.

    The security object consists of two compulsory elements, admins and members, which are used to specify the list of users and/or roles that have admin and members rights to the database respectively:

    • members: they can read all types of documents from the DB, and they can write (and edit) documents to the DB except for design documents.

    • admins: they have all the privileges of plus the privileges: write (and edit) design documents, add/remove database admins and members and set the database revisions limit. They can not create a database nor delete a database.

    Both members and admins objects contain two array-typed fields:

    • names: List of CouchDB user names

    • roles: List of users roles

    Any additional fields in the security object are optional. The entire security object is made available to validation and other internal functions so that the database can control and limit functionality.

    If both the names and roles fields of either the admins or members properties are empty arrays, or are not existent, it means the database has no admins or members.

    Having no admins, only server admins (with the reserved _admin role) are able to update design documents and make other admin level changes.

    Having no members or roles, any user can write regular documents (any non-design document) and read documents from the database.

    Since CouchDB 3.x newly created databases have by default the _admin role to prevent unintentional access.

    If there are any member names or roles defined for a database, then only authenticated users having a matching name or role are allowed to read documents from the database (or do a call).

    Note

    If the security object for a database has never been set, then the value returned will be empty.

    Also note, that security objects are not regular versioned documents (that is, they are not under MVCC rules). This is a design choice to speed up authorization checks (avoids traversing a database’s documents B-Tree).

      • db – Database name

      Request Headers

      • Accept –

        • application/json

        • text/plain

      Response Headers

      Response JSON Object

      • admins (object) – Object with two fields as names and roles. See description above for more info.

      • members (object) – Object with two fields as and roles. See description above for more info.

      Status Codes

      • – Request completed successfully

    Request:

    Response:

    PUT /{db}/_security

    Sets the security object for the given database.

      • db – Database name

      Request Headers

      • Accept –

        • application/json

      • – application/json

      Request JSON Object

      Response Headers

      • Content-Type –

        • application/json

        • text/plain; charset=utf-8

      Response JSON Object

      • ok (boolean) – Operation status

      Status Codes

      • – Request completed successfully

      • 401 Unauthorized – CouchDB Server Administrator privileges required

    Response: