Request Syntax Request Parameters Response Syntax Response Elements Errors Example See Also

CreateSecret

Creates a new secret. A secret in Secrets Manager consists of both the protected secret data and the important information needed to manage the secret.

Secrets Manager stores the encrypted secret data in one of a collection of "versions" associated with the secret. Each version contains a copy of the encrypted secret data. Each version is associated with one or more "staging labels" that identify where the version is in the rotation cycle. The SecretVersionsToStages field of the secret contains the mapping of staging labels to the active versions of the secret. Versions without a staging label are considered deprecated and not included in the list.

You provide the secret data to be encrypted by putting text in either the SecretString parameter or binary data in the SecretBinary parameter, but not both. If you include SecretString or SecretBinary then Secrets Manager also creates an initial secret version and automatically attaches the staging label AWSCURRENT to the new version.

Note

If you call an operation to encrypt or decrypt the SecretString or SecretBinary for a secret in the same account as the calling user and that secret doesn't specify a AWS KMS encryption key, Secrets Manager uses the account's default AWS managed customer master key (CMK) with the alias aws/secretsmanager. If this key doesn't already exist in your account then Secrets Manager creates it for you automatically. All users and roles in the same AWS account automatically have access to use the default CMK. Note that if an Secrets Manager API call results in AWS creating the account's AWS-managed CMK, it can result in a one-time significant delay in returning the result.
If the secret resides in a different AWS account from the credentials calling an API that requires encryption or decryption of the secret value then you must create and use a custom AWS KMS CMK because you can't access the default CMK for the account using credentials from a different AWS account. Store the ARN of the CMK in the secret when you create the secret or when you update it by including it in the KMSKeyId. If you call an API that must encrypt or decrypt SecretString or SecretBinary using credentials from a different account then the AWS KMS key policy must grant cross-account access to that other account's user or role for both the kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt operations.

Minimum permissions

To run this command, you must have the following permissions:

secretsmanager:CreateSecret
kms:GenerateDataKey - needed only if you use a customer-managed AWS KMS key to encrypt the secret. You do not need this permission to use the account default AWS managed CMK for Secrets Manager.
kms:Decrypt - needed only if you use a customer-managed AWS KMS key to encrypt the secret. You do not need this permission to use the account default AWS managed CMK for Secrets Manager.
secretsmanager:TagResource - needed only if you include the Tags parameter.

Related operations

To delete a secret, use DeleteSecret.
To modify an existing secret, use UpdateSecret.
To create a new version of a secret, use PutSecretValue.
To retrieve the encrypted secure string and secure binary values, use GetSecretValue.
To retrieve all other details for a secret, use DescribeSecret. This does not include the encrypted secure string and secure binary values.
To retrieve the list of secret versions associated with the current secret, use DescribeSecret and examine the SecretVersionsToStages response value.

Request Syntax


{
   "ClientRequestToken": "string",
   "Description": "string",
   "KmsKeyId": "string",
   "Name": "string",
   "SecretBinary": blob,
   "SecretString": "string",
   "Tags": [ 
      { 
         "Key": "string",
         "Value": "string"
      }
   ]
}

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

ClientRequestToken

(Optional) If you include SecretString or SecretBinary, then an initial version is created as part of the secret, and this parameter specifies a unique identifier for the new version.

Note

If you use the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDK to call this operation, then you can leave this parameter empty. The CLI or SDK generates a random UUID for you and includes it as the value for this parameter in the request. If you don't use the SDK and instead generate a raw HTTP request to the Secrets Manager service endpoint, then you must generate a ClientRequestToken yourself for the new version and include the value in the request.

This value helps ensure idempotency. Secrets Manager uses this value to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate versions if there are failures and retries during a rotation. We recommend that you generate a UUID-type value to ensure uniqueness of your versions within the specified secret.

If the ClientRequestToken value isn't already associated with a version of the secret then a new version of the secret is created.
If a version with this value already exists and the version SecretString and SecretBinary values are the same as those in the request, then the request is ignored.
If a version with this value already exists and that version's SecretString and SecretBinary values are different from those in the request then the request fails because you cannot modify an existing version. Instead, use PutSecretValue to create a new version.

This value becomes the VersionId of the new version.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 32. Maximum length of 64.

Required: No

Description

(Optional) Specifies a user-provided description of the secret.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Maximum length of 2048.

Required: No

KmsKeyId

(Optional) Specifies the ARN, Key ID, or alias of the AWS KMS customer master key (CMK) to be used to encrypt the SecretString or SecretBinary values in the versions stored in this secret.

You can specify any of the supported ways to identify a AWS KMS key ID. If you need to reference a CMK in a different account, you can use only the key ARN or the alias ARN.

If you don't specify this value, then Secrets Manager defaults to using the AWS account's default CMK (the one named aws/secretsmanager). If a AWS KMS CMK with that name doesn't yet exist, then Secrets Manager creates it for you automatically the first time it needs to encrypt a version's SecretString or SecretBinary fields.

Important

You can use the account default CMK to encrypt and decrypt only if you call this operation using credentials from the same account that owns the secret. If the secret resides in a different account, then you must create a custom CMK and specify the ARN in this field.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 0. Maximum length of 2048.

Required: No

Name

Specifies the friendly name of the new secret.

The secret name must be ASCII letters, digits, or the following characters : /_+=.@-

Note

Do not end your secret name with a hyphen followed by six characters. If you do so, you risk confusion and unexpected results when searching for a secret by partial ARN. Secrets Manager automatically adds a hyphen and six random characters at the end of the ARN.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 512.

Required: Yes

SecretBinary

(Optional) Specifies binary data that you want to encrypt and store in the new version of the secret. To use this parameter in the command-line tools, we recommend that you store your binary data in a file and then use the appropriate technique for your tool to pass the contents of the file as a parameter.

Either SecretString or SecretBinary must have a value, but not both. They cannot both be empty.

This parameter is not available using the Secrets Manager console. It can be accessed only by using the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs.

Type: Base64-encoded binary data object

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 0. Maximum length of 65536.

Required: No

SecretString

(Optional) Specifies text data that you want to encrypt and store in this new version of the secret.

Either SecretString or SecretBinary must have a value, but not both. They cannot both be empty.

If you create a secret by using the Secrets Manager console then Secrets Manager puts the protected secret text in only the SecretString parameter. The Secrets Manager console stores the information as a JSON structure of key/value pairs that the Lambda rotation function knows how to parse.

For storing multiple values, we recommend that you use a JSON text string argument and specify key/value pairs. For information on how to format a JSON parameter for the various command line tool environments, see Using JSON for Parameters in the AWS CLI User Guide. For example:

{"username":"bob","password":"abc123xyz456"}

If your command-line tool or SDK requires quotation marks around the parameter, you should use single quotes to avoid confusion with the double quotes required in the JSON text.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 0. Maximum length of 65536.

Required: No

Tags

(Optional) Specifies a list of user-defined tags that are attached to the secret. Each tag is a "Key" and "Value" pair of strings. This operation only appends tags to the existing list of tags. To remove tags, you must use UntagResource.

Important

Secrets Manager tag key names are case sensitive. A tag with the key "ABC" is a different tag from one with key "abc".
If you check tags in IAM policy Condition elements as part of your security strategy, then adding or removing a tag can change permissions. If the successful completion of this operation would result in you losing your permissions for this secret, then this operation is blocked and returns an Access Denied error.

This parameter requires a JSON text string argument. For information on how to format a JSON parameter for the various command line tool environments, see Using JSON for Parameters in the AWS CLI User Guide. For example:

[{"Key":"CostCenter","Value":"12345"},{"Key":"environment","Value":"production"}]

If your command-line tool or SDK requires quotation marks around the parameter, you should use single quotes to avoid confusion with the double quotes required in the JSON text.

The following basic restrictions apply to tags:

Maximum number of tags per secret—50
Maximum key length—127 Unicode characters in UTF-8
Maximum value length—255 Unicode characters in UTF-8
Tag keys and values are case sensitive.
Do not use the aws: prefix in your tag names or values because AWS reserves it for AWS use. You can't edit or delete tag names or values with this prefix. Tags with this prefix do not count against your tags per secret limit.
If you use your tagging schema across multiple services and resources, remember other services might have restrictions on allowed characters. Generally allowed characters: letters, spaces, and numbers representable in UTF-8, plus the following special characters: + - = . _ : / @.

Type: Array of Tag objects

Required: No

Response Syntax


{
   "ARN": "string",
   "Name": "string",
   "VersionId": "string"
}

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

ARN

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the secret that you just created.

Note

Secrets Manager automatically adds several random characters to the name at the end of the ARN when you initially create a secret. This affects only the ARN and not the actual friendly name. This ensures that if you create a new secret with the same name as an old secret that you previously deleted, then users with access to the old secret don't automatically get access to the new secret because the ARNs are different.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 20. Maximum length of 2048.

Name

The friendly name of the secret that you just created.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 256.

VersionId

The unique identifier associated with the version of the secret you just created.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 32. Maximum length of 64.

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

EncryptionFailure

Secrets Manager can't encrypt the protected secret text using the provided KMS key. Check that the customer master key (CMK) is available, enabled, and not in an invalid state. For more information, see How Key State Affects Use of a Customer Master Key.

HTTP Status Code: 400

InternalServiceError

An error occurred on the server side.

HTTP Status Code: 500

InvalidParameterException

You provided an invalid value for a parameter.

HTTP Status Code: 400

InvalidRequestException

You provided a parameter value that is not valid for the current state of the resource.

Possible causes:

You tried to perform the operation on a secret that's currently marked deleted.
You tried to enable rotation on a secret that doesn't already have a Lambda function ARN configured and you didn't include such an ARN as a parameter in this call.

HTTP Status Code: 400

LimitExceededException

The request failed because it would exceed one of the Secrets Manager internal limits.

HTTP Status Code: 400

MalformedPolicyDocumentException

You provided a resource-based policy with syntax errors.

HTTP Status Code: 400

PreconditionNotMetException

The request failed because you did not complete all the prerequisite steps.

HTTP Status Code: 400

ResourceExistsException

A resource with the ID you requested already exists.

HTTP Status Code: 400

ResourceNotFoundException

We can't find the resource that you asked for.

HTTP Status Code: 400

Example

The following example shows how to create a secret. Secrets Manager retrieves the credentials stored in the encrypted secret value from a file on disk named mycreds.json. The JSON request string input and response output displays formatted code with white space and line breaks for better readability. Submit your input as a single line JSON string.

Sample Request


POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: secretsmanager.region.domain
Accept-Encoding: identity
X-Amz-Target: secretsmanager.CreateSecret
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
User-Agent: <user-agent-string>
X-Amz-Date: <date>
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<credentials>,SignedHeaders=<headers>, Signature=<signature>
Content-Length: <payload-size-bytes>

{
  "Name": "MyTestDatabaseSecret",
  "Description": "My test database secret created with the CLI",
  "SecretString": "{\"username\":\"david\",\"password\":\"BnQw!XDWgaEeT9XGTT29\"}", "ClientRequestToken": "EXAMPLE1-90ab-cdef-fedc-ba987SECRET1"
}

Sample Response


HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: <date>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Content-Length: <response-size-bytes>
Connection: keep-alive
x-amzn-RequestId: <request-id-guid>

{
  "ARN": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-west-2:123456789012:secret:MyTestDatabaseSecret-a1b2c3",
  "Name":"MyTestDatabaseSecret",
  "VersionId": "EXAMPLE1-90ab-cdef-fedc-ba987SECRET1"
}