Is there a way to automatically authenticate the google javascript api client, without user interaction?
Something like this:
User loads webpage -> webpage automatically signs in into a predefined user account -> api calls get executed
Basically i want to prevent the popup where you have to select an account and sign in to it. As the account which will be signed in is always the same.
EDIT:
pinoyyid answer looks promising and is what im looking for. But this only works if the user has signed in with an account at least once, if im not mistaken.
Now i dont want to use an account supplied by the user, but a predefined account which i am the owner of and sign this account in.
Im not entirely sure if this is even possible, as i have to provide the password/some authentication code to google and somehow do this in a secure way.
Use Case: The website will create a Youtube Broadcast via the Youtube Data/Livestream API for the specified account.
Yes you can do that. Referring to https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/javascript-implicit-flow
there are three pieces of information that will get you where you want to be:-
The OAuth URL can include a login_hint which is the email of your intended user
The OAuth URL can also include prompt=none which will do its work silently
This all needs to run in an iframe because this is based on origins and redirects.
==EDIT==
If the requirement is for a browser client to connect to a Google Account other than that of the browser user, then this is not possible. It's kinda obvious really that to do so would require a credential in the browser which by definition is not a secure environment.
The approach I would take would be to use a service such as Lambda or Google Cloud Functions (or whatever marketing name they have this week) to create a proxy for the corresponding Google API using a credential stored server-side.
Related
In the documents of Google One-Tap sign in, it says:
Returning users are signed in automatically, even when they switch devices or platforms, or after their session expires.
Question 1:
But it doesn't say anywhere how it does this? Is the user refresh token saved in the browser's cache? How can it then auto log in a user cross devices?
Question 2: The reason I ask is because I have a setup where I initialize the Google API client for JavaScript ("GAPI"). The GAPI library also automatically logs in a user whenever the client is "initialised" through gapi.client.init().
Now the problem is that after I have added the Google One-Tap code (Or should I say "YOLO code"? : ) my user gets logged in through One-Tap and also through GAPI. I can prevent this by not initializing the GAPI client, but I don't think that's wise, because I thought this whole library is built to manage my refresh tokens etc. Is my understanding correct that One-Tap does exactly the same and in case I only want to Authenticate users I do not need the GAPI client anymore?
Really, which library does a better job at managing my refresh tokens? And how do they differ? I'm clueless...
The way I implemented my login is the following:
Try to login in the user first using gapi.auth2. Maybe the user was previously signed into the site.
If can't login user automatically, then use googleyolo to try to find existing user accounts.
If no existing accounts, then present a signin button for user to signin.
I can give you some code snippet if you need.
To answer your questions.
#1, the credential is stored within the browser/device. If the user has never signed into google in a device, then yolo won't be able to sign in the user.
#2. googleyolo will also login the user, the difference is that it will give the account selector even if there's only one user to select (it will automatically login the user if there's only one). gapi simply sign in the user without showing anything.
I'm working on application which generates reports and statistics about youtubers channels. I couldn't find in Google docs, how the Youtube User can grant read-only access from my application to his Youtube account? (I'm meant something like facebook application).
I'm a little confused how many ways of authentication are in Google API and which one should I use.
When you want to access private channel data, you will need to use OAuth authorization.
The way this works is that your app redirects clients to Google's authorization page, on which they can pick a YouTube channel associated with their Google account. If they are not already logged-in, they will first be asked by Google to log in (authenticate) and then proceed to the authorization page.
Once on the authorization page, they can decide to grant or refuse your application access to whatever it is your application demands access to. This is the important part: When your application redirects the user to the authorization page, it must specify one or more scopes.
Scopes define sets of actions that an application can perform once the user gives their permission. An application cannot perform operations that aren't within the scope of its powers. The three most important scopes of the YouTube API are:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube: Manage your YouTube account
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly: View your YouTube account
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload: Manage your YouTube videos
That means that you can ask users to give your application read-only access to their channel by configuring your app to use the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly scope. This is an example of what the URL that your application redirects its users to could look like:
https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth?
scope=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googleapis.com%2Fauth%2Fyoutube.readonly&
access_type=offline&
redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2Foauth2callback&
response_type=code&
client_id=CLIENT_ID
If the user accepts, your server will be given an authorization code which it can exchange for a set of access and refresh tokens. The resource server (Google, in this case) will know with which scope these tokens were originally obtained and reject any calls outside of the scope.
This is what the authorization page currently looks like:
For more information, please read 'Using OAuth 2.0 for Web Server Applications' on Google Developers.
there is a service where one can authorize using their Google account.
I need to automate the workflow with that service, so my software has to log-in with a given Google account.
But as I've never done that before I don't know where to start. Most related answers suggest to display the authorization page to the user letting them to enter their login/password of their Google account, but that's not the case since my software must be fully automated, plus it is being ran in terminal mode so no browser neither any human to enter anything should be involved.
I wonder if such automation could be possible and where should I start.
The standard way to authenticate a user with google is through a three-legged oauth authentication flow (in a browser). You can do this in go using the oauth2 or with a more comprehensive package like goth
The general flow is:
redirect user to a landing page on google's site where they are prompted to grant you access.
google will make a callback to your site with a special code.
you make another request to exchange that code for an access token and a refresh token.
Use access token to use google apis, and use refresh token to get a new access token anytime it expires.
It is more detailed than this, and there is a lot to get right to keep it secure, but that is the general idea.
Now, like you've said, your app is a command line thing, so it is hard to do that flow. Unfortunately, you may need to do that once, just to get a refresh token. Once you have that, you could give it to your application: myapp -google-token=FOOBAR123, and your app can exchange the referesh token for a valid access token.
Maybe this will help: https://github.com/burnash/gspread/wiki/How-to-get-OAuth-access-token-in-console%3F
I have an application using Google Drive that must (a) not require user login and (b) populate a document that authorised users can view.
Because of this it appears that using a regular account as a service account is my only option, as described here https://developers.google.com/drive/web/service-accounts
Use regular Google accounts as application-owned accounts
You may create a regular Google account like any user would, by going
through the Google account sign-up flow or by creating an account on
your Google Apps domain. Make sure it is then never used by an actual
person but only by your application.
To be able to access the account’s Drive programmatically you need to
manually go through the OAuth 2.0 web-server flow once and then store
or hard-code the user’s credentials, such as the refresh token, to be
able to programmatically access its Drive. For more information about
the web server flow for Drive, see Implementing Server-side
Authorization.
While it discourages user access, it doesn't ban it. However I am confused by the line
you need to manually go through the OAuth 2.0 web-server flow once and
then store or hard-code the user’s credentials
There doesn't seem to be a documented way to do this (yes, I have searched) - could someone step me though it?
You don't use a regular account as a service account, these are different things. Each one is a type of application-owned account.
The regular account is just a normal Google account that your application uses. Since regular accounts require the manual authorization step (going to the browser, logging in to Google and authorizing your app), you need to do this manually the first time and then save the token. There's some examples in this page. After you save the token, your app can authorize itself without your intervention.
The service account is an account that is not associated with an user and that do not require manual authorization. You can create a service account in the Developers Console as described here. With this type of account, you use a private key file to authorize your app.
Unless you need access to the web interface of the account that will manage your files (for example, to buy more storage), I'd recommend using the service account, since it doesn't require the manual step.
I am building a WP7 Twitter client. The normal OAuth 1.0 flow involves obtaining a request token by navigating a web browser to https://api.twitter.com/1/oauth/authenticate with my app's consumer key; this page will show a login prompt and ask the user to authorize my app to perform actions on their behalf. Upon completion, this page will redirect to a callback URL supplied by my app, with the request token supplied as a parameter.
For web apps this makes sense. I don't understand how this is supposed to work for a standalone mobile/desktop app, though. The Twitter API documentation seems to imply that this should be a feasible option. They do offer an alternative xAuth mechanism that allows an app to gather username/password itself and then supply that directly to obtain an access token. The API documentation points out that this is an inferior option (as it requires the user to trust the app, not just Twitter, with their password), but I don't see how I have any reasonable alternative?
(there is also a PIN-based option, but that's a pretty burdensome solution for the user)
I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything obvious.
"For web apps this makes sense. I don't understand how this is
supposed to work for a standalone mobile/desktop app, though."
Just embed a web browser control in your app, and navigate to the twitter authentication page. Then detect the redirection to the callback url (using the Navigating event) and retrieve the parameter. Many twitter apps do that, it's basically the same as asking the user for the login and password, except that instead of your own controls you're displaying twitter's page.
Nope, you're correct. The option for a mobile/desktop application is either a pin-based option or to use xAuth. Once you have an xAuth application has an access token it is indistinguishable from OAuth (it only changes the authorisation workflow). One thing it does change, and this is very specific to Twitter, is that if you do use xAuth then your application will not be allowed to read or write Direct Messages. See Twitter's The Application Permission Model page for more information.