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

CreateSecret

Creates a new secret. A secret can be a password, a set of credentials such as a user name and password, an OAuth token, or other secret information that you store in an encrypted form in Secrets Manager. The secret also includes the connection information to access a database or other service, which Secrets Manager doesn't encrypt. A secret in Secrets Manager consists of both the protected secret data and the important information needed to manage the secret.

For information about creating a secret in the console, see Create a secret.

To create a secret, you can provide the secret value to be encrypted in either the SecretString parameter or the SecretBinary parameter, but not both. If you include SecretString or SecretBinary then Secrets Manager creates an initial secret version and automatically attaches the staging label AWSCURRENT to it.

For database credentials you want to rotate, for Secrets Manager to be able to rotate the secret, you must make sure the JSON you store in the SecretString matches the JSON structure of a database secret.

If you don't specify an AWS KMS encryption key, Secrets Manager uses the AWS managed key 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 AWS account automatically have access to use aws/secretsmanager. Creating aws/secretsmanager can result in a one-time significant delay in returning the result.

If the secret is in a different AWS account from the credentials calling the API, then you can't use aws/secretsmanager to encrypt the secret, and you must create and use a customer managed AWS KMS key.

Secrets Manager generates a CloudTrail log entry when you call this action. Do not include sensitive information in request parameters except SecretBinary or SecretString because it might be logged. For more information, see Logging Secrets Manager events with AWS CloudTrail.

Required permissions: secretsmanager:CreateSecret. If you include tags in the secret, you also need secretsmanager:TagResource. For more information, see IAM policy actions for Secrets Manager and Authentication and access control in Secrets Manager.

To encrypt the secret with a KMS key other than aws/secretsmanager, you need kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt permission to the key.

Request Syntax


{
   "AddReplicaRegions": [ 
      { 
         "KmsKeyId": "string",
         "Region": "string"
      }
   ],
   "ClientRequestToken": "string",
   "Description": "string",
   "ForceOverwriteReplicaSecret": boolean,
   "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.

AddReplicaRegions

A list of Regions and AWS KMS keys to replicate secrets.

Type: Array of ReplicaRegionType objects

Array Members: Minimum number of 1 item.

Required: No

ClientRequestToken

If you include SecretString or SecretBinary, then Secrets Manager creates an initial version for the secret, and this parameter specifies the unique identifier for the new version.

Note

If you use the AWS CLI or one of the AWS SDKs 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

The description of the secret.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Maximum length of 2048.

Required: No

ForceOverwriteReplicaSecret

Specifies whether to overwrite a secret with the same name in the destination Region.

Type: Boolean

Required: No

KmsKeyId

The ARN, key ID, or alias of the AWS KMS key that Secrets Manager uses to encrypt the secret value in the secret. An alias is always prefixed by alias/, for example alias/aws/secretsmanager. For more information, see About aliases.

To use a AWS KMS key in a different account, use the key ARN or the alias ARN.

If you don't specify this value, then Secrets Manager uses the key aws/secretsmanager. If that key doesn't yet exist, then Secrets Manager creates it for you automatically the first time it encrypts the secret value.

Type: String

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

Required: No

Name

The name of the new secret.

The secret name can contain ASCII letters, numbers, and the following characters: /_+=.@-

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 after the secret name at the end of the ARN.

Type: String

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

Required: Yes

SecretBinary

The binary data to encrypt and store in the new version of the secret. We recommend that you store your binary data in a file and then pass the contents of the file as a parameter.

Either SecretString or SecretBinary must have a value, but not both.

This parameter is not available in the Secrets Manager console.

Type: Base64-encoded binary data object

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

Required: No

SecretString

The text data to encrypt and store in this new version of the secret. We recommend you use a JSON structure of key/value pairs for your secret value.

Either SecretString or SecretBinary must have a value, but not both.

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 a Lambda rotation function can parse.

Type: String

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

Required: No

Tags

A list of tags to attach to the secret. Each tag is a key and value pair of strings in a JSON text string, for example:

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

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 permissions policies as part of your security strategy, then adding or removing a tag can change permissions. If the completion of this operation would result in you losing your permissions for this secret, then Secrets Manager blocks the operation and returns an Access Denied error. For more information, see Control access to secrets using tags and Limit access to identities with tags that match secrets' tags.

For information about how to format a JSON parameter for the various command line tool environments, see Using JSON for Parameters. 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 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, 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",
   "ReplicationStatus": [ 
      { 
         "KmsKeyId": "string",
         "LastAccessedDate": number,
         "Region": "string",
         "Status": "string",
         "StatusMessage": "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 ARN of the new secret. The ARN includes the name of the secret followed by six random characters. This ensures that if you create a new secret with the same name as a deleted secret, then users with access to the old secret don't 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 name of the new secret.

Type: String

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

ReplicationStatus

A list of the replicas of this secret and their status:

Failed, which indicates that the replica was not created.
InProgress, which indicates that Secrets Manager is in the process of creating the replica.
InSync, which indicates that the replica was created.

Type: Array of ReplicationStatusType objects

VersionId

The unique identifier associated with the version of the new secret.

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.

DecryptionFailure

Secrets Manager can't decrypt the protected secret text using the provided KMS key.

HTTP Status Code: 400

EncryptionFailure

Secrets Manager can't encrypt the protected secret text using the provided KMS key. Check that the KMS key is available, enabled, and not in an invalid state. For more information, see Key state: Effect on your KMS key.

HTTP Status Code: 400

InternalServiceError

An error occurred on the server side.

HTTP Status Code: 500

InvalidParameterException

The parameter name or value is invalid.

HTTP Status Code: 400

InvalidRequestException

A parameter value is not valid for the current state of the resource.

Possible causes:

The secret is scheduled for deletion.
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.
The secret is managed by another service, and you must use that service to update it. For more information, see Secrets managed by other AWS services.

HTTP Status Code: 400

LimitExceededException

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

HTTP Status Code: 400

MalformedPolicyDocumentException

The resource policy has 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

Secrets Manager can't find the resource that you asked for.

HTTP Status Code: 400

Examples

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. For an example of mycreds.json, see Creating a secret. 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\":\"EXAMPLE-PASSWORD\"}", "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"
}