Create a waiting room

A waiting room can be created from the dashboard or via API.

​​ Create a waiting room from the dashboard

1. Within your application, go to Traffic > Waiting Rooms.
2. Click Create.
3. Customize the settings for your waiting room. For additional guidance refer to Best practices .
4. Click Next.
5. If you can customize your waiting room , update the HTML and CSS as needed.
6. Click Next.
7. Review your settings before saving. If you customized your waiting room, make sure to preview the result .
8. Click Save. Your new waiting room will be enabled by default.

​​ Create a waiting room via the API

Create a waiting room by appending the following endpoint in the Waiting Room API Open external link to the Cloudflare API base URL.

POST zones/{zone_identifier}/waiting_rooms

The Cloudflare API base URL is:

https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4

For authentication instructions, refer to Getting Started: Requests Open external link in the Cloudflare API documentation.

For help with endpoints and pagination, refer to Getting Started: Endpoints Open external link .

Configure your waiting room with the following required parameters in the data field:

• name - A unique name for the waiting room. Use only alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores.
• host - Host name for which you want to configure a waiting room.
• total_active_users - The total number of active user sessions on the route at a point in time.
• new_users_per_minute - The number of new users gaining entry into the route every minute.

The following parameters are optional:

• path - The path within the host for which you want to configure a waiting room. The waiting room will be enabled for all subpaths as well.
• description - A description of the waiting room.
• session_duration - Lifetime of a cookie (in minutes) set by Cloudflare for users who get access to the route.
• custom_page_html - HTML code to customize the appearance of your waiting room. Cloudflare provides a sample HTML template that enables the display of estimated wait time on the waiting room page. The default waiting room is used if custom_page_html is not specified. Refer to Waiting Room API properties Open external link .

​​ Example

The following example API request configures a waiting room.

curl -X POST "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/zones/{zone-id}/waiting_rooms" \
-H "X-Auth-Email: user@example.com" \
-H "X-Auth-Key: xxxxxxxx" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{
  "name": "shop_waiting_room",
  "description": "Waiting room for webshop",
  "host": "shop.example.com",
  "path": "/shop",
  "queue_all": true,
  "new_users_per_minute": 200,
  "total_active_users": 300,
  "session_duration": 1,
  "disable_session_renewal": false,
  "json_response_enabled": false,
  "queueing_method": "FIFO",
  "cookie_attributes": {
    "samesite": "auto",
    "secure": "auto"
  }
}'

The response for the request above is:

{
  "success": true,
  "errors": [],
  "messages": [],
  "result": [
    {
      "id": "1111111111111111111111",
      "created_on": "2014-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z",
      "modified_on": "2014-01-01T05:20:00.12345Z",
      "name": "shop_waiting_room",
      "description": "Waiting room for webshop",
      "host": "shop.example.com",
      "path": "/shop",
      "queue_all": true,
      "new_users_per_minute": 200,
      "total_active_users": 300,
      "session_duration": 1,
      "disable_session_renewal": false,
      "json_response_enabled": false,
      "queueing_method": "FIFO",
      "cookie_attributes": {
        "samesite": "auto",
        "secure": "auto"
      },
    }
  ]
}