PostgreSQL: Change a user password

In this PostgreSQL post explains how to change a user's password in PostgreSQL with syntax and examples.

Description

The ALTER USER statement is used to change a user's password in the PostgreSQL database.

Syntax

The syntax for changing a password using the ALTER USER statement in PostgreSQL is:

ALTER USER <strong>user_name</strong>
  WITH [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD '<strong>new_password</strong>'
| VALID UNTIL <strong>'expiration'</strong>;

Parameters or Arguments

user_name

The user whose password you wish to change.

new_password

The new password to assign to the user.

expiration

The date/time value when the password will expire. If you never want the password to expire, you set expiration to 'infinity'.

Example

Let's look at an example that shows how to use the ALTER USER statement in PostgreSQL to change a password.

For example, if you wanted to update the user named AODBA with the password fantastic, you would run the following ALTER USER statement in PostgreSQL:

ALTER USER AODBA
  WITH PASSWORD 'fantastic';

If you wanted to set the password for the user AODBA to expire on January 1, 2015, you would use the ALTER USER statement as follows:

ALTER USER AODBA
  VALID UNTIL 'Jan 1, 2015';

If you wanted the password for the user AODBA to never expire, you would use the ALTER USER statement as follows:

ALTER USER AODBA
  VALID UNTIL 'infinity';