Google Users: List users data of a specific group - google-api

Question

I am in the need of listing the users data belonging to a specific group within the organization. The documentation does not specify if this is possible. I was really hoping there could be some kind of query that would allow this. For example email in (1#domain.com,2#domain.com). However, I don't see that being possible. The only way I could think to accomplish this would be:
Get a list of all the members in the group (https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/reference/rest/v1/members/list)
Get each user data by email (https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/reference/rest/v1/users/get)
The problem with the above approach is that if a group contains 50+ members, this means that I have to make all that amount of requests, which is counter productive. Imagine how long that would take.
Any ideas? Greatly appreciate it.

Answer 1

Unfortunately I don’t think you can skip this two step process, but you can speed it up using batch requests. This
allows you to request up to 1000 calls in a single request. The steps would be:
Make a batch request to get all the members of all the groups you want (using members.list).
Make a batch request to get all the user info that you need using their id (using user.get).
Notice that the data in the result won’t be sorted, but they will be tagged by Content-ID.
References
Sending Batch Requests (Directory API)
Method: members.list (Directory API)
Method: users.get (Directory API)

Answer 2

I thought about the batching request a couple of hours after I posted the question. The problem with Node JS is that it does not has built in support for batch requests, unlike the php client library for example; Therefore, I had to spent some time implementing support for it on my own since I was not able to find any example. I'll share the solution in case it helps someone else or for my future reference.
async function getGroupMembersData(){
const groupEmail = "group#domain.com"; //google group email
const groupMembers = await getGroupMembers(groupEmail).catch(error=>{
console.error(`Error querying group members: ${error.toString()}`);
});
if(!groupMembers){ return; }
const url = "https://www.googleapis.com/batch/admin/directory_v1";
const scopes = ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly"];
const requests = [];
for(let i=0; i<groupMembers.length; ++i){
const user = groupMembers[i];
const request = {
email: user,
endpoint: `GET directory_v1/admin/directory/v1/users/${user}?fields=*`
};
requests.push(request);
}
const batchRequestData = await batchProcess(url, scopes, requests).catch(error=>{
console.error(`Error processing batch request: ${error.toString()}`);
});
if(!batchRequestData){ return; }
const usersList = batchRequestData.map(i=>{
return i.responseBody;
});
console.log(usersList);
}
//get group members using group email address
async function getGroupMembers(groupKey){
const client = await getClient(scopes); //function to get an authorized client, you have to implement on your own
const service = google.admin({version: "directory_v1", auth: client});
const request = await service.members.list({
groupKey,
fields: "members(email)",
maxResults: 200
});
const members = !!request.data.members ? request.data.members.map(i=>i.email) : [];
return members;
}
//batch request processing in groups of 100
async function batchProcess(batchUrl, scopes, requests){
const client = await getClient(scopes); //function to get an authorized client, you have to implement on your own
let results = [];
const boundary = "foobar99998888"; //boundary line definition
let batchBody = ""; const nl = "\n";
const batchLimit = 100; //define batch limit (max supported = 100)
const totalRounds = Math.ceil(requests.length / batchLimit);
let batchRound = 1;
let batchItem = 0;
let roundLimit = batchLimit;
do{
roundLimit = roundLimit < requests.length ? roundLimit : requests.length;
//build the batch request body
for(batchItem; batchItem<roundLimit; batchItem++){
const requestData = requests[batchItem];
batchBody += `--${boundary}${nl}`;
batchBody += `Content-Type: application/http${nl}`;
batchBody += `Content-Id: <myapprequest-${requestData.email}>${nl}${nl}`;
batchBody += `${requestData.endpoint}${nl}`;
}
batchBody += `--${boundary}--`;
//send the batch request
const batchRequest = await client.request({
url: batchUrl,
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Content-Type": `multipart/mixed; boundary=${boundary}`
},
body: batchBody
}).catch(error=>{
console.log("Error processing batch request: " + error);
});
//parse the batch request response
if(!!batchRequest){
const batchResponseData = batchRequest.data;
const responseBoundary = batchRequest.headers["content-type"].split("; ")[1].replace("boundary=", "");
const httpResponses = batchResponseParser(batchResponseData, responseBoundary);
results.push(...httpResponses);
}
batchRound++;
roundLimit += batchLimit;
} while(batchRound <= totalRounds);
return results;
};
//batch response parser
function batchResponseParser(data, boundary){
const nl = "\r\n";
data = data.replace(`--${boundary}--`,"");
const responses = data.split(`--${boundary}`);
responses.shift();
const formattedResponses = responses.map(i=>{
const parts = i.split(`${nl}${nl}`);
const responseMetaParts = (parts[0].replace(nl, "")).split(nl);
let responseMeta = {};
responseMetaParts.forEach(part=>{
const objectParts = part.split(":");
responseMeta[objectParts[0].trim()] = objectParts[1].trim();
});
const responseHeadersParts = parts[1].split(nl);
let responseHeaders = {};
responseHeadersParts.forEach(part=>{
if(part.indexOf("HTTP/1.1") > -1){
responseHeaders.status = part;
} else {
const objectParts = part.split(":");
responseHeaders[objectParts[0].trim()] = objectParts[1].trim();
}
});
const reg = new RegExp(`${nl}`, "g");
const responseBody = JSON.parse(parts[2].replace(reg, ""));
const formatted = {
responseMeta: responseMeta,
responseHeaders: responseHeaders,
responseBody: responseBody
};
return formatted;
});
return formattedResponses;
}