[docs/defensive code] 400003: Bad Request if you skip the authSetting attribute when creating a user

[dev-mkc19]

Describe the bug
I try to add user to a site and receive error from API responsen, but fact user being added to the server. Unfortunately discussion from issue #990 does't help to resole the problem. More then that I sent request to server directly without using TSC library and got the same error response.

Versions
Details of your environment, including:

• Tableau Server version 2022.1.7 (20221.22.0916.0328) 64-bit Linux
• Python version 3.8
• TSC library version 0.23

To Reproduce
Here's my code:

import tableauserverclient as TSC
import logging
logging.basicConfig(format='%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s',
                    filename="tsc.log", level="DEBUG")

tableau_auth = TSC.PersonalAccessTokenAuth('debug', '<TOKEN>')
server = TSC.Server('https://tableau.<DOMAIN>.com', use_server_version=True)
server.auth.sign_in(tableau_auth)

newU = TSC.UserItem('test@<DOMAIN>.com', 'Viewer')

# add the new user to the site
newU = server.users.add(newU)

server.auth.sign_out()

Results

File ~/Documents/tsc_roject/env8/lib/python3.8/site-packages/tableauserverclient/server/endpoint/endpoint.py:147, in Endpoint.post_request(self, url, xml_request, content_type, parameters)
    146 def post_request(self, url, xml_request, content_type=XML_CONTENT_TYPE, parameters=None):
--> 147     return self._make_request(
...

ServerResponseError: 

	400003: Bad Request
		Payload is either malformed or incomplete

Direct request:

curl "https://tableau.<DOMAIN>.com/api/3.15/sites/abea43f7-3d3a-4c4a-adcf-2007aa48c888/users/" -X POST -H "X-Tableau-Auth:<TOKEN>" -d @add-user-to-site.xml

add-user-to-site.xml:

<tsRequest>
  <user name="test@<DOMAIN>.com"
    siteRole="Viewer" />
</tsRequest>

Response:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><tsResponse xmlns="http://tableau.com/api" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://tableau.com/api https://help.tableau.com/samples/en-us/rest_api/ts-api_3_15.xsd"><error code="400003"><summary>Bad Request</summary><detail>Payload is either malformed or incomplete</detail></error></tsResponse>

[dev-mkc19]

Found the clue! In my case attribute auth_setting is required. So the code should looks like

newU = TSC.UserItem('test@.com', 'Viewer', auth_setting='ServerDefault')

bcantoni I suppose misunderstanding from my side was because of documentation marks auth-setting attribute as an optional and TSC library doesn't raise the error also.

[bcantoni]

Thanks for the detailed report. I'll double-check that and update the documentation to be more clear.

[mohitbhandari37]

@bcantoni Adding serverDefault to the request header does not work, we received the same error i.e.

400003: Bad Request
	Payload is either malformed or incomplete

while adding the user.

Below is the request -

Do we need to add any more details in request ?

Note - we are logged in as Server Admin while creating user.

[jacalata]

What kind of user management/auth does the server have? Local users, or Active Directory, or something else?

[keidikapllani]

I had the same issue, had to pass TableauIDWithMFA in auth_setting . Not sure if this helps anyone, but it seems to be required for Tableau Cloud instance.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. If this is still relevant, please comment to keep it open.

[jacalata]

Closing — the docs clarification promised in this thread has landed. Users.add() docstring now spells out that auth_setting is required for Tableau Cloud and documents the 400003 payload error with the TableauIDWithMFA remediation (tableauserverclient/server/endpoint/users_endpoint.py:256-292). TSC can't Python-side reject a missing auth_setting without knowing the target is Cloud, so the doc fix is the delivered resolution here. Please open a fresh issue if you hit this on a current TSC version.