# How to Create a User and Add a Role in MongoDB

> URL: https://www.atlantic.net/dedicated-server-hosting/how-to-create-a-user-and-add-a-role-in-mongodb/ | Published: 2024-08-01 | Updated: 2024-08-17 | Author: Hitesh Jethva

MongoDB, a popular NoSQL database, offers robust user management and role-based access control (RBAC) features to secure your data. Creating users and assigning roles in MongoDB helps in maintaining a secure environment by ensuring that only authorized individuals can access and manipulate the data.

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the steps to create a new user and assign roles to them.

## Step 1 – Connecting to MongoDB

First, let’s connect to our MongoDB instance. Open your terminal and run the following command:

```bash
mongo
```

You should see an output similar to this:

```bash
>
```

## Step 2 – Creating a New User

MongoDB user management is typically performed in the admin database. Switch to the admin database by executing:

```bash
use admin
```

Output:

```bash
switched to db admin
```

Now, let’s create a new user. We’ll create a user named testUser with the password password123. This user will be assigned the readWrite role on a database called mydatabase.

```bash
db.createUser({
  user: "testUser",
  pwd: "password123",
  roles: [
    { role: "readWrite", db: "mydatabase" }
  ]
})
```

Output:

```bash
Successfully added user: {
	"user" : "testUser",
	"roles" : [
		{
			"role" : "readWrite",
			"db" : "mydatabase"
		}
	]
}
```

**Explanation:**

- **user:** The username for the new user.
- **pwd:** The password for the new user.
- **roles:** An array specifying the roles assigned to the user. Here, testUser is granted the readWrite role on the mydatabase database.

## Step 3 – Adding Additional Roles to a User

If you need to add more roles to an existing user, you can use the updateUser command. Let’s add the dbAdmin role to testUser on mydatabase.

```bash
db.updateUser("testUser", {
  roles: [
    { role: "readWrite", db: "mydatabase" },
    { role: "dbAdmin", db: "mydatabase" }
  ]
})
```

Output:

```bash
Successfully updated user: {
	"user" : "testUser",
	"roles" : [
		{
			"role" : "readWrite",
			"db" : "mydatabase"
		},
		{
			"role" : "dbAdmin",
			"db" : "mydatabase"
		}
	]
}
```

In the command above, we updated testUser to have both readWrite and dbAdmin roles on the mydatabase database.

## Step 4 – Verifying User Roles

Let’s verify the roles assigned to testUser. First, we need to authenticate as testUser.

```bash
db.auth("testUser", "password123")
```

Output:

```bash
1
```

A return value of 1 indicates successful authentication.

Now, let’s check the roles assigned to testUser. Run the following command:

```bash
db.runCommand({ usersInfo: "testUser" })
```

Output.

```bash
{
	"users" : [
		{
			"_id" : "admin.testUser",
			"user" : "testUser",
			"db" : "admin",
			"roles" : [
				{
					"role" : "readWrite",
					"db" : "mydatabase"
				},
				{
					"role" : "dbAdmin",
					"db" : "mydatabase"
				}
			]
		}
	],
	"ok" : 1
}
```

The output shows the roles assigned to testUser, confirming that the user has both readWrite and dbAdmin roles on mydatabase.

## Conclusion

In this article, we’ve walked through the steps to create a new user and assign roles in MongoDB. We started by connecting to the MongoDB instance, creating a user, and assigning initial roles. We then demonstrated how to update user roles and verify the roles assigned to the user. Try to deploy a MongoDB database and create a user on [dedicated server hosting](https://www.atlantic.net/dedicated-server-hosting/) from Atlantic.Net!