USERFETCH

USERFETCH is a term used in technical documentation to denote a software interface and protocol for retrieving user attribute data from an identity directory or authentication service. In typical deployments, a USERFETCH service exposes endpoints that allow authorized clients to request user records or subsets of attributes, subject to access controls, policy rules, and privacy constraints.

A USERFETCH implementation may be built as a RESTful API, a RPC service, or a library integrated into applications. Core features include authentication and authorization, attribute filtering, paging, caching, auditing, and support for custom attributes. The data flow generally involves a trusted server that enforces access control and returns user data to approved clients, often with mechanisms to limit the scope of data returned.

The data model for USERFETCH centers on a user entity with identifiers, contact information, group memberships, roles, and preference data, with extensible schemas for organization-specific attributes. Clients typically specify query parameters or request bodies to select attributes, apply filters, and control pagination.

Security and privacy considerations emphasize least privilege access, encryption in transit and at rest, audit trails, and consent handling. Compliance often requires tamper-evident logging and adherence to data protection regulations, with careful management of data retention and deletion policies.

Interoperability commonly references established identity standards such as SCIM, LDAP schemas, OpenID Connect, and OAuth 2.0, with many deployments mapping USERFETCH attributes to these models. History and usage describe the concept as an abstraction used in enterprise IAM tooling, SaaS integrations, and developer APIs for user data retrieval.