# postgresql_user – Add or remove a user (role) from a PostgreSQL server instance

- Synopsis
- Requirements
- Parameters
- Notes
- See Also
- Examples
- Return Values
- Status

## Synopsis

- Adds or removes a user (role) from a PostgreSQL server instance (“cluster” in PostgreSQL terminology) and, optionally, grants the user access to an existing database or tables.
- A user is a role with login privilege.
- The fundamental function of the module is to create, or delete, users from a PostgreSQL instances. Privilege assignment, or removal, is an optional step, which works on one database at a time. This allows for the module to be called several times in the same module to modify the permissions on different databases, or to grant permissions to already existing users.
- A user cannot be removed until all the privileges have been stripped from the user. In such situation, if the module tries to remove the user it will fail. To avoid this from happening the fail_on_user option signals the module to try to remove the user, but if not possible keep going; the module will report if changes happened and separately if the user was removed or not.

## Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the host that executes this module.

- psycopg2

## Parameters

Parameter | Choices/Defaults | Comments
--- | --- | ---
ca_cert string |  | Specifies the name of a file containing SSL certificate authority (CA) certificate(s). If the file exists, the server's certificate will be verified to be signed by one of these authorities. aliases: ssl_rootcert
conn_limit integer added in 2.4 |  | Specifies the user (role) connection limit.
db string |  | Name of database to connect to and where user's permissions will be granted. aliases: login_db

encrypted
boolean

Choices:
- no
- yes ←

Whether the password is stored hashed in the database.
Passwords can be passed already hashed or unhashed, and postgresql ensures the stored password is hashed when `encrypted` is set.
Note: Postgresql 10 and newer doesn't support unhashed passwords.
Previous to Ansible 2.6, this was `no` by default.

expires string |  | The date at which the user's password is to expire. If set to `'infinity'`, user's password never expire. Note that this value should be a valid SQL date and time type.

fail_on_user
boolean

Choices:
- no
- yes ←

If `yes`, fail when user (role) can't be removed. Otherwise just log and continue.
aliases: fail_on_role

groups list / elements=string added in 2.9 |  | The list of groups (roles) that need to be granted to the user.
login_host string |  | Host running the database.
login_password string |  | The password used to authenticate with.
login_unix_socket string |  | Path to a Unix domain socket for local connections.
login_user string | Default: "postgres" | The username used to authenticate with.
name string / required |  | Name of the user (role) to add or remove. aliases: user

no_password_changes
boolean

Choices:
- no ←
- yes

If `yes`, don't inspect database for password changes. Effective when `pg_authid` is not accessible (such as AWS RDS). Otherwise, make password changes as necessary.

password
string

Set the user's password, before 1.4 this was required.
Password can be passed unhashed or hashed (MD5-hashed).
Unhashed password will automatically be hashed when saved into the database if `encrypted` parameter is set, otherwise it will be save in plain text format.
When passing a hashed password it must be generated with the format `'str["md5"] + md5[ password + username ]'`, resulting in a total of 35 characters. An easy way to do this is `echo "md5$(echo -n 'verysecretpasswordJOE' | md5sum | awk '{print $1}'`").
Note that if the provided password string is already in MD5-hashed format, then it is used as-is, regardless of `encrypted` parameter.

port integer | Default: 5432 | Database port to connect to. aliases: login_port

priv
string

Slash-separated PostgreSQL privileges string: `priv1/priv2`, where privileges can be defined for database ( allowed options - 'CREATE', 'CONNECT', 'TEMPORARY', 'TEMP', 'ALL'. For example `CONNECT` ) or for table ( allowed options - 'SELECT', 'INSERT', 'UPDATE', 'DELETE', 'TRUNCATE', 'REFERENCES', 'TRIGGER', 'ALL'. For example `table:SELECT` ). Mixed example of this string: `CONNECT/CREATE/table1:SELECT/table2:INSERT`.

role_attr_flags
string

Choices:
- [NO]SUPERUSER
- [NO]CREATEROLE
- [NO]CREATEDB
- [NO]INHERIT
- [NO]LOGIN
- [NO]REPLICATION
- [NO]BYPASSRLS

PostgreSQL user attributes string in the format: CREATEDB,CREATEROLE,SUPERUSER.
Note that '[NO]CREATEUSER' is deprecated.
To create a simple role for using it like a group, use `NOLOGIN` flag.

session_role string added in 2.8 |  | Switch to session_role after connecting. The specified session_role must be a role that the current login_user is a member of. Permissions checking for SQL commands is carried out as though the session_role were the one that had logged in originally.

ssl_mode
string

Choices:
- allow
- disable
- prefer ←
- require
- verify-ca
- verify-full

Determines whether or with what priority a secure SSL TCP/IP connection will be negotiated with the server.
See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-ssl.html for more information on the modes.
Default of `prefer` matches libpq default.

state
string

Choices:
- absent
- present ←

The user (role) state.

## Notes

Note

- The module creates a user (role) with login privilege by default. Use NOLOGIN role_attr_flags to change this behaviour.
- If you specify PUBLIC as the user (role), then the privilege changes will apply to all users (roles). You may not specify password or role_attr_flags when the PUBLIC user is specified.
- The default authentication assumes that you are either logging in as or sudo’ing to the `postgres` account on the host.
- To avoid “Peer authentication failed for user postgres” error, use postgres user as a become_user.
- This module uses psycopg2, a Python PostgreSQL database adapter. You must ensure that psycopg2 is installed on the host before using this module.
- If the remote host is the PostgreSQL server (which is the default case), then PostgreSQL must also be installed on the remote host.
- For Ubuntu-based systems, install the postgresql, libpq-dev, and python-psycopg2 packages on the remote host before using this module.
- The ca_cert parameter requires at least Postgres version 8.4 and psycopg2 version 2.4.3.

## See Also

See also

postgresql_privs – Grant or revoke privileges on PostgreSQL database objects
  The official documentation on the postgresql_privs module.
postgresql_membership – Add or remove PostgreSQL roles from groups
  The official documentation on the postgresql_membership module.
postgresql_owner – Change an owner of PostgreSQL database object
  The official documentation on the postgresql_owner module.
PostgreSQL database roles
  Complete reference of the PostgreSQL database roles documentation.

## Examples

    - name: Connect to acme database, create django user, and grant access to database and products table
      postgresql_user:
        db: acme
        name: django
        password: ceec4eif7ya
        priv: "CONNECT/products:ALL"
        expires: "Jan 31 2020"

    # Connect to default database, create rails user, set its password (MD5-hashed),
    # and grant privilege to create other databases and demote rails from super user status if user exists
    - name: Create rails user, set MD5-hashed password, grant privs
      postgresql_user:
        name: rails
        password: md59543f1d82624df2b31672ec0f7050460
        role_attr_flags: CREATEDB,NOSUPERUSER

    - name: Connect to acme database and remove test user privileges from there
      postgresql_user:
        db: acme
        name: test
        priv: "ALL/products:ALL"
        state: absent
        fail_on_user: no

    - name: Connect to test database, remove test user from cluster
      postgresql_user:
        db: test
        name: test
        priv: ALL
        state: absent

    - name: Connect to acme database and set user's password with no expire date
      postgresql_user:
        db: acme
        name: django
        password: mysupersecretword
        priv: "CONNECT/products:ALL"
        expires: infinity

    # Example privileges string format
    # INSERT,UPDATE/table:SELECT/anothertable:ALL

    - name: Connect to test database and remove an existing user's password
      postgresql_user:
        db: test
        user: test
        password: ""

    - name: Create user test and grant group user_ro and user_rw to it
      postgresql_user:
        name: test
        groups:
        - user_ro
        - user_rw

## Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key | Returned | Description
--- | --- | ---
queries list added in 2.8 | always | List of executed queries. Sample: ['CREATE USER "alice"', 'GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE "acme" TO "alice"']

## Status

- This module is guaranteed to have backward compatible interface changes going forward. [stableinterface]
- This module is maintained by the Ansible Community. [community]

### Authors

- Ansible Core Team

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