# Resource names and custom IDs in Salto Nebula

## Overview

The Salto Nebula API is a [resource-oriented API](https://cloud.google.com/apis/design/resources).
This means that resources are named entities, and resource names are their identifiers.

The resource name is organized hierarchically using collection IDs and resource IDs, separated by forward slashes.
If a resource contains a sub-resource, the sub-resource's name is formed by specifying the parent resource name followed by the sub-resource's ID - again, separated by forward slashes.

## Nebula resource names

All entities in Salto Nebula, like [users](/nebula/api/salto/nebula/user/v1) or [access rights](/nebula/api/salto/nebula/accessright/v1), have a unique resource identifier called `name`.

{{% info-panel %}}
`name` should not be confused with `display_name`.
{{% /info-panel %}}

The `name` always has a specific format.
For example, for a user it could be something like this:

- `installations/surelock-homes-hq/users/01FF2GQJATHV5Z90S1Y5CC6ECD`

These identifiers of random characters are generated automatically if you do not fill out the `{entity}_id` field when creating an entity.
For example, for a user this would be [`user_id`](/nebula/api/salto/nebula/user/v1).

If you **do** fill it in, whatever identifier you put is used, but only for the segment that corresponds to it.

For example, if when creating a user you set the `user_id` to "12345678Z" (because that's a unique identifier you already have for that user in your own database), then the user will be created with the following `name`:

- `installations/surelock-homes-hq/users/12345678Z`.

## Custom IDs

If you have an existing database with users and their corresponding IDs, you can use the ID of your own database rather than the ID that has been assigned to the entity by Nebula.

Every `{entity}_id` present in `Create{Entity}` methods is being used for its inclusion in the last part of the `name`.

This means that when you set a custom `user_id`, for example, rather than querying the `user_id` to identify and retrieve the user again, you have to make a `getName` request instead.

This will return the standard format (`installations/surelock-homes-hq/users/12345678Z`) which contains the custom ID that you passed to it when you created the user.