1CREATE ROLE(7) PostgreSQL 15.4 Documentation CREATE ROLE(7)
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6 CREATE_ROLE - define a new database role
7
9 CREATE ROLE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]
10 where option can be:
12 SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
14 | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
15 | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
16 | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
17 | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
18 | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
19 | BYPASSRLS | NOBYPASSRLS
20 | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
21 | [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password' | PASSWORD NULL
22 | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
23 | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
24 | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
25 | ROLE role_name [, ...]
26 | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
27 | USER role_name [, ...]
28 | SYSID uid
29
31 CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a PostgreSQL database cluster. A role is
32 an entity that can own database objects and have database privileges; a
33 role can be considered a “user”, a “group”, or both depending on how it
34 is used. Refer to Chapter 22 and Chapter 21 for information about
35 managing users and authentication. You must have CREATEROLE privilege
36 or be a database superuser to use this command.
37 Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and so are
39 valid in all databases in the cluster.
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42 name
43 The name of the new role.
44 SUPERUSER
46 NOSUPERUSER
47 These clauses determine whether the new role is a “superuser”, who
48 can override all access restrictions within the database. Superuser
49 status is dangerous and should be used only when really needed. You
50 must yourself be a superuser to create a new superuser. If not
51 specified, NOSUPERUSER is the default.
52 CREATEDB
54 NOCREATEDB
55 These clauses define a role's ability to create databases. If
56 CREATEDB is specified, the role being defined will be allowed to
57 create new databases. Specifying NOCREATEDB will deny a role the
58 ability to create databases. If not specified, NOCREATEDB is the
59 default.
60 CREATEROLE
62 NOCREATEROLE
63 These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to create,
64 alter, drop, comment on, change the security label for, and grant
65 or revoke membership in other roles. See role creation for more
66 details about what capabilities are conferred by this privilege. If
67 not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.
68 INHERIT
70 NOINHERIT
71 These clauses determine whether a role “inherits” the privileges of
72 roles it is a member of. A role with the INHERIT attribute can
73 automatically use whatever database privileges have been granted to
74 all roles it is directly or indirectly a member of. Without
75 INHERIT, membership in another role only grants the ability to SET
76 ROLE to that other role; the privileges of the other role are only
77 available after having done so. If not specified, INHERIT is the
78 default.
79 LOGIN
81 NOLOGIN
82 These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log in; that
83 is, whether the role can be given as the initial session
84 authorization name during client connection. A role having the
85 LOGIN attribute can be thought of as a user. Roles without this
86 attribute are useful for managing database privileges, but are not
87 users in the usual sense of the word. If not specified, NOLOGIN is
88 the default, except when CREATE ROLE is invoked through its
89 alternative spelling CREATE USER.
90 REPLICATION
92 NOREPLICATION
93 These clauses determine whether a role is a replication role. A
94 role must have this attribute (or be a superuser) in order to be
95 able to connect to the server in replication mode (physical or
96 logical replication) and in order to be able to create or drop
97 replication slots. A role having the REPLICATION attribute is a
98 very highly privileged role, and should only be used on roles
99 actually used for replication. If not specified, NOREPLICATION is
100 the default. You must be a superuser to create a new role having
101 the REPLICATION attribute.
102 BYPASSRLS
104 NOBYPASSRLS
105 These clauses determine whether a role bypasses every row-level
106 security (RLS) policy. NOBYPASSRLS is the default. You must be a
107 superuser to create a new role having the BYPASSRLS attribute.
108 Note that pg_dump will set row_security to OFF by default, to
110 ensure all contents of a table are dumped out. If the user running
111 pg_dump does not have appropriate permissions, an error will be
112 returned. However, superusers and the owner of the table being
113 dumped always bypass RLS.
114 CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
116 If role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent connections
117 the role can make. -1 (the default) means no limit. Note that only
118 normal connections are counted towards this limit. Neither prepared
119 transactions nor background worker connections are counted towards
120 this limit.
121 [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
123 PASSWORD NULL
124 Sets the role's password. (A password is only of use for roles
125 having the LOGIN attribute, but you can nonetheless define one for
126 roles without it.) If you do not plan to use password
127 authentication you can omit this option. If no password is
128 specified, the password will be set to null and password
129 authentication will always fail for that user. A null password can
130 optionally be written explicitly as PASSWORD NULL.
131 Note
133 Specifying an empty string will also set the password to null,
134 but that was not the case before PostgreSQL version 10. In
135 earlier versions, an empty string could be used, or not,
136 depending on the authentication method and the exact version,
137 and libpq would refuse to use it in any case. To avoid the
138 ambiguity, specifying an empty string should be avoided.
139 The password is always stored encrypted in the system catalogs. The
140 ENCRYPTED keyword has no effect, but is accepted for backwards
141 compatibility. The method of encryption is determined by the
142 configuration parameter password_encryption. If the presented
143 password string is already in MD5-encrypted or SCRAM-encrypted
144 format, then it is stored as-is regardless of password_encryption
145 (since the system cannot decrypt the specified encrypted password
146 string, to encrypt it in a different format). This allows reloading
147 of encrypted passwords during dump/restore.
148 VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
150 The VALID UNTIL clause sets a date and time after which the role's
151 password is no longer valid. If this clause is omitted the password
152 will be valid for all time.
153 IN ROLE role_name
155 The IN ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles to which the
156 new role will be immediately added as a new member. (Note that
157 there is no option to add the new role as an administrator; use a
158 separate GRANT command to do that.)
159 IN GROUP role_name
161 IN GROUP is an obsolete spelling of IN ROLE.
162 ROLE role_name
164 The ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles which are
165 automatically added as members of the new role. (This in effect
166 makes the new role a “group”.)
167 ADMIN role_name
169 The ADMIN clause is like ROLE, but the named roles are added to the
170 new role WITH ADMIN OPTION, giving them the right to grant
171 membership in this role to others.
172 USER role_name
174 The USER clause is an obsolete spelling of the ROLE clause.
175 SYSID uid
177 The SYSID clause is ignored, but is accepted for backwards
178 compatibility.
179
181 Use ALTER ROLE to change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE to
182 remove a role. All the attributes specified by CREATE ROLE can be
183 modified by later ALTER ROLE commands.
184 The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are being
186 used as groups is to use GRANT and REVOKE.
187 The VALID UNTIL clause defines an expiration time for a password only,
189 not for the role per se. In particular, the expiration time is not
190 enforced when logging in using a non-password-based authentication
191 method.
192 The INHERIT attribute governs inheritance of grantable privileges (that
194 is, access privileges for database objects and role memberships). It
195 does not apply to the special role attributes set by CREATE ROLE and
196 ALTER ROLE. For example, being a member of a role with CREATEDB
197 privilege does not immediately grant the ability to create databases,
198 even if INHERIT is set; it would be necessary to become that role via
199 SET ROLE before creating a database.
200 The INHERIT attribute is the default for reasons of backwards
202 compatibility: in prior releases of PostgreSQL, users always had access
203 to all privileges of groups they were members of. However, NOINHERIT
204 provides a closer match to the semantics specified in the SQL standard.
205 Be careful with the CREATEROLE privilege. There is no concept of
207 inheritance for the privileges of a CREATEROLE-role. That means that
208 even if a role does not have a certain privilege but is allowed to
209 create other roles, it can easily create another role with different
210 privileges than its own (except for creating roles with superuser
211 privileges). For example, if the role “user” has the CREATEROLE
212 privilege but not the CREATEDB privilege, nonetheless it can create a
213 new role with the CREATEDB privilege. Therefore, regard roles that have
214 the CREATEROLE privilege as almost-superuser-roles.
215 PostgreSQL includes a program createuser(1) that has the same
217 functionality as CREATE ROLE (in fact, it calls this command) but can
218 be run from the command shell.
219 The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately; if two new
221 sessions start at about the same time when just one connection “slot”
222 remains for the role, it is possible that both will fail. Also, the
223 limit is never enforced for superusers.
224 Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with
226 this command. The password will be transmitted to the server in
227 cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command history
228 or the server log. The command createuser(1), however, transmits the
229 password encrypted. Also, psql(1) contains a command \password that can
230 be used to safely change the password later.
231
233 Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a password:
234 CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;
236 Create a role with a password:
238 CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';
240 (CREATE USER is the same as CREATE ROLE except that it implies LOGIN.)
242 Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of 2004.
244 After one second has ticked in 2005, the password is no longer valid.
245 CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';
247 Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:
249 CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;
251
253 The CREATE ROLE statement is in the SQL standard, but the standard only
254 requires the syntax
255 CREATE ROLE name [ WITH ADMIN role_name ]
257 Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of CREATE
259 ROLE, are PostgreSQL extensions.
260 The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but it
262 regards them as distinct concepts and leaves all commands defining
263 users to be specified by each database implementation. In PostgreSQL we
264 have chosen to unify users and roles into a single kind of entity.
265 Roles therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the
266 standard.
267 The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely approximated
269 by giving users the NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are given the
270 INHERIT attribute.
271
273 SET ROLE (SET_ROLE(7)), ALTER ROLE (ALTER_ROLE(7)), DROP ROLE
274 (DROP_ROLE(7)), GRANT(7), REVOKE(7), createuser(1)
275PostgreSQL 15.4 2023 CREATE ROLE(7)