# How to seed local database with SSO user data
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [November 21, 2016, 7:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210 "2016-11-21T19:09:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 7:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210/1 "2016-11-21T19:09:41Z")
I’ve got a client that I’m doing an import for. They’re using SSO, which will supply avatars, but of course those get populated only when someone logs in. I noticed `client.sync_sso` and it appears to do just what I need. I think I’d like to do this from the API, but rails console would be fine too.
I thought that `client.sync_sso` would work, but it appears to **push** SSO data, not **pull** SSO data.
Is there some way that I can suck down the SSO data for each user? It doesn’t look like the API will help, maybe something in the console? Looks like `lookup_or_create_user` might help, but I can’t find the `external_id`.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210/2 "2016-11-21T19:16:06Z")
I have done exactly this.
What I did was getting the user database, and created all the users using the API.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 7:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210/3 "2016-11-21T19:19:09Z")
That sounds like what I’m looking for @Falco. Are you saying that I should create all the users from the API before I run the import script that creates the users, or that I should somehow use an API call in the import script to create the user?
Can you point me to some code?
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 7:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210/4 "2016-11-21T19:28:39Z")
I would create the users during the import, and set the avatar at import time also.
You need to ask for a dump that also contains avatars urls.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-seed-local-database-with-sso-user-data/53210/5 "2016-11-21T19:34:04Z")
I believe I have the URLs. Since avatars get populated when someone logs in, I was thinking that I could use the API (or console) to suck them down from SSO. The importers I’d looked at were uploading the avatars (which I don’t have), but now I see that I can pass a `avatar_url` to `create_users`, which should solve my problem.
Thanks.