Principal
Principals are the subjects of policies and the owners of API keys, tokens, and key pairs. When you register through the dashboard, BigState creates your first principal (the owner) and issues the initial credentials shown on the Welcome page.
An account can have many principals. Use a separate principal for each app, environment, or user that needs its own credentials and permissions—for example a Node.js publisher, a browser dashboard, and staging versus production. That way you can scope API keys and policies per identity instead of sharing one key across everything.
Principal types#
Each principal has a numeric type and a display name:
Application (type 1)
Services, publishers, and other backend integrations.
User (type 2)
People or interactive clients that act as a user identity.
When to use these endpoints#
- Onboard a service or user identity before attaching keys or policies
- Inspect or rename an existing principal after setup
- List principals with a glob-style pattern when managing many identities
- Delete a principal you no longer need (review attached credentials and policies first)
For first-time account setup, prefer Account and credentials. Use these APIs when you manage additional principals programmatically.
Endpoints#
Related resources#
After a principal exists, grant access and issue credentials: