# Scaleway User Data API

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-user-data-api/  
**Provider:** Scaleway — https://apis.io/providers/scaleway/  
**Documentation:** https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/instances/

Scaleway User Data API is one of 74 APIs that [Scaleway](https://apis.io/providers/scaleway/) publishes on the [APIs.io](https://apis.io/) network, described by a machine-readable OpenAPI specification. Tagged areas include User Data. The published artifact set on APIs.io includes an OpenAPI specification and API documentation.

User data is a key/value store you can use to provide your instance with introspective data. As an example of use, Scaleway images contain the `scw-generate-ssh-keys` script, which generates the SSH server’s host keys, then stores their fingerprints as user data under the `ssh-host-fingerprints` key. This way, before connecting to the instance using SSH, one can query the fingerprints to ensure that the remote host is the expected one, thus avoiding any man-in-the-middle attack. There are two ways of accessing user data: - **From within a running Instance**, by requesting the Metadata API at http://169.254.42.42/user_data (or http://[fd00:42::42]/user_data using IPv6). The `scaleway-ecosystem` package, installed by default on all OS images provided by Scaleway, ships with the `scw-userdata` helper command that allows you to easily query the user data from the instance. For security reasons, viewing and editing user data is only allowed to queries originating from a port below 1024 (by default, only the super-user can bind to ports below 1024). To specify the source port with cURL, use the `--local-port` option (e.g. `curl --local-port 1-1023 http://169.254.42.42/user_data`). - **From the Instance API** by using the methods described below.

## Machine-readable artifacts (11)

- **OpenAPI** — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/scaleway/refs/heads/main/openapi/scaleway-user-data-api-openapi.yml
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/instances/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/kubernetes/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/iam/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/load-balancer/zoned-api/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/managed-databases-for-postgresql-and-mysql/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/vpc/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/serverless-containers/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/serverless-functions/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/secret-manager/
- **Documentation** — https://www.scaleway.com/en/developers/api/transactional-email/

## Other Scaleway APIs (12)

- [Scaleway Generative APIs](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-generative-apis/)
- [Scaleway Access Control List API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-access-control-list-api/)
- [Scaleway ACLs API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-acls-api/)
- [Scaleway Alert Subscribers API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-alert-subscribers-api/)
- [Scaleway API Keys API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-api-keys-api/)
- [Scaleway Applications API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-applications-api/)
- [Scaleway Backends API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-backends-api/)
- [Scaleway Backups API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-backups-api/)
- [Scaleway Blocklist API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-blocklist-api/)
- [Scaleway Certificate API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-certificate-api/)
- [Scaleway Cluster types API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-cluster-types-api/)
- [Scaleway Clusters API](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-clusters-api/)

## Tags

User Data

---

Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/apis/scaleway/scaleway-user-data-api/). The API's provider profile, Kin Score and agent-readiness rating are at https://apis.io/providers/scaleway/.