Community Edition

User and password management for Community Edition is a subset of the functionality available in Enterprise Edition. The following is true for user management in Community Edition:

  • It is possible to create multiple users.

  • All users assume the privileges of an admin for the available functionality.

Users are managed by using built-in procedures through Cypher. This section gives a list of all the security procedures for user management along with some simple examples. Use Neo4j Browser or Neo4j Cypher Shell to run the examples provided. Unless stated otherwise, all arguments to the procedures described in this section must be supplied.

Name Description

dbms.security.changePassword

Change the current user’s password

dbms.security.createUser

Add a user

dbms.security.deleteUser

Delete a user

dbms.security.listUsers

List all users

Change the current user’s password

The procedure dbms.security.changePassword(newPassword, requirePasswordChange) has been entirely removed since the corresponding Cypher administration command also requires the old password, and thus is more secure. Please use ALTER CURRENT USER SET PASSWORD FROM 'oldPassword' TO 'newPassword', documented in the Cypher Manual, instead.

Add a user

The current user is able to add a user to the system.

Syntax:

CALL dbms.security.createUser(username, password, requirePasswordChange)

Arguments:

Name Type Description

username

String

This is the user’s username.

password

String

This is the user’s password.

requirePasswordChange

Boolean

This is optional, with a default of true. If this is true, (i) the user will be forced to change their password when they log in for the first time, and (ii) until the user has changed their password, they will be forbidden from performing any other operation.

Exceptions:

The username either contains characters other than the ASCII characters between ! and ~, or contains : and ,.

The username is already in use within the system.

The password is the empty string.
Example 1. Add a user

The following example creates a user with the username 'johnsmith' and password 'h6u4%kr'. When the user 'johnsmith' logs in for the first time, he will be required to change his password.

CALL dbms.security.createUser('johnsmith', 'h6u4%kr', true)

Delete a user

The current user is able to delete permanently a user from the system.

Syntax:

CALL dbms.security.deleteUser(username)

Arguments:

Name Type Description

username

String

This is the username of the user to be deleted.

Exceptions:

The username does not exist in the system.

The username matches that of the current user (i.e. deleting the current user is not permitted).

Considerations:

Deleting a user will terminate with immediate effect all of the user’s sessions and roll back any running transactions.

As it is not possible for the current user to delete themselves, there will always be at least one user in the system.
Example 2. Delete a user

The following example deletes a user with the username 'janebrown'.

CALL dbms.security.deleteUser('janebrown')

List all native users

The current user is able to view the details of every user in the system.

Syntax:

CALL dbms.security.listUsers()

Returns:

Name Type Description

username

String

This is the user’s username.

flags

List<String>

This is a flag indicating whether the user needs to change their password.
Example 3. List all users

The following example shows the username for each user in the system, and whether the user needs to change their password.

CALL dbms.security.listUsers()
+-----------------------------------------+
| username | flags                        |
+-----------------------------------------+
| "neo4j"  | []                           |
| "anne"   | ["password_change_required"] |
| "bill"   | []                           |
+-----------------------------------------+
3 rows