Question

The provided ssh_keys value must be an array.

I’m receiving The provided ssh_keys value must be an array., and I’ve tried various dumping of the array of ssh key ids. using API attribute described in https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#create-a-new-droplet.

# list of numbers
print(type(key_ids), key_ids)
<class 'list'> [12345678, 12345678]

# stringified list via `str()` or via `json.dumps()`
<class 'str'> [12345678, 12345678]

# mapping each value to string, seems unlikely since ids are returned as numbers when creating droplets... but trying many things anyway. via `list(map(lambda k: str(k), [12345678, 12345678]))`
<class 'list'> ['12345678', '12345678']

The payload looks like:

{
        'name': 'mydropletname',
        'region': 'sfo2',
        'size': '4gb',
        'image': 'ghost-18-04',
        'ssh_keys': <variations of above>
}

And I’m using the following endpoint: https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets


Submit an answer


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Accepted Answer

ok, figured it out! the issue is with formatting the params. it has to be like 'ssh_keys[]': [123] instead of 'ssh_keys': [123].

following up; it also doesnt appear as if using the SSH key fingerprints matters either. for example replacing the above example’s get_key_ids method with:

def get_key_fingerprints(token):
    """
    Using ssh_key fingerprints because array of ids seems broken on Digital
    Ocean's side?
    """

    request = requests.get('https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/account/keys', headers=headers(token))

    return list(map(lambda key: key['fingerprint'], request.json()['ssh_keys']))

doesnt effect things either.

also! if you do 'ssh_keys': [] it isnt rejected, but any string or number value (whether valid ids/fingerprints or not!) give the exact same error message. is this because Digital Ocean doesnt want to reveal whether or not youre using a proper ID for security purposes???

jarland
DigitalOcean Employee
DigitalOcean Employee badge
February 18, 2019

Hey friend,

You’ll want to get the ID for the SSH key by listing the keys first: https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#list-all-keys

From there just plug it in like this:

"ssh_keys":[19402414],

Here’s a curl string I just ran, with the API key removed, which did the job:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer [removed]" -d '{"name":"example.com","region":"nyc3","size":"s-1vcpu-1gb","image":"ubuntu-16-04-x64","ssh_keys":[19402414],"backups":false,"ipv6":true,"user_data":null,"private_networking":null,"volumes": null,"tags":["web"]}' "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets" 

Jarland

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

Sign up

Get our biweekly newsletter

Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

Hollie's Hub for Good

Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.

Become a contributor

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

Welcome to the developer cloud

DigitalOcean makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Learn more
DigitalOcean Cloud Control Panel