My current application access one of the Google APIs using "3-legs" OAuth 2.0. User authorizes the app on Google consent screen, then the app requests API on behalf of the user and shows him some fancy data loaded from API. Everyday my application loads and transforms data from this API, so when the user comes next time, he sees the most relevant and actual data.
Everything works fine on the start, but as time goes, I faced two problems:
1. Query limits.
2. Token lifetime.
My question is dedicated to the second one, that I refer as "token lifetime". After some amount of time, the access token expires, and when user comes back to the app, our app obliged to send him to consent screen again. Moreover, all the time while access token has been in expired state, my app cannot load relevant data for user.
How can I solve this problem? How to continue lifetime of access/refresh tokens? Would Service account help? Would Service account work for Google Search Console API for every user, or should the user be a G Suite user inside my domain or what?
These questions are completely unclear from the official documentation here and from the Search Console API documentation.
If you have past experience with Google's APIs, please help me!
Thank you
When you use OAuth with user-consent, you do not need to prompt the user for consent repeatedly.
[a] If your usecase is entirely online and you want to be able to request a token each time the user visits your app, use the Google Sign In library or see this documentation for client-side apps.
[b] If your usecase is that you want to be able to obtain access tokens even when the user is not present, then you need to request an authorization code and store your refresh token. Your refresh tokens are longer-lived tokens and can be exchanged periodically for access tokens.
Related
I am using this googleapis nodejs client for calendar, and everything works perfect except that if I remove access from google account security settings,
calendar is still connected. Is there any method to check for removed access from google account? How to handle those cases?
When a user runs your application the first time they are presented with a consent form. Which asks them to grant permission for your application to access their Google calendar data. From this point on when ever your application runs the user may have to login again but they will not have to grant your application permission. If you have a refresh token you will be able to use that when ever you like to request a new access token. the access token will be valid for one hour.
Now if you request a new access Token as stated its valid for one hour. This is true even if the user goes to Google Account security for their account and removes the consent for an application access their data.
Your still going to be able to access their data while any access tokens you have currently are valid. If the user tries to use your application again they will have to consent permission. If you try to use the refresh token it will no longer work.
Access tokens work for one hour they are not reauthorized during that time its assumed that they are valid. (This may in fact depend upon the scope and API in question and how googles policy server works.)
access token are designed to be self contained permission systems. As long as you have an access token for the correct scope most apis assume that you have access. However in the event this method is accessing critical data then they may have a policy server setup. This server could be doing an extra check on an access token to ensure that the user still has access even though they have a valid access token. However doing this can be very time consuming and resource heavy as reevaluating every call to ensure that the user still has access. It kind of defeats the purpose of having access tokens that are valid for an hour in the first place.
I am making an api that accepts social logins from a few services, namely Google.
So far, the mobile app allows the user to log in to google with the OAuth2 flow, and obtains a JWT token. The first time I was able to get the profile info from the token (first name, family name, profile pic, etc...). Now, I doesn't contain all of the fields I need.
I remember reading somewhere that google will only send all the fields from time to time...
Since I'm in testing, I tend to wipe the user database often and would like to be able to count on the google JWT to re-create the account.
I'd rather use the token than hitting the userInfo API. Especially since the JWT is technically secure.
So, is there any sure way to get all of the user profile info in the id_token from the google API?
Check the 'scopes' that you define when logging in with Google. Each scope has a type of data that it returns back to the user. Be sure that you're using scope: 'profile'" when initializing the Google login. If additional scopes are necessary, use add them to the request as shown in the link below.
https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/web/incremental-auth
I was using an older endpoint, changed to https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/v2/auth and everything is ok!
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'm writing a web application that reads my personal calendar data, crunches stats, and then spits them out for the world to see. I don't need an authorization flow. Is it possible to leverage the Google APIs without going through a user sign-in flow? In other words, I want my personal Google account permanently and securely signed in to my server without the risk of my token invalidating or having to re-auth.
Right now I'm signing myself in with an offline token, then uploading the authorization file onto my server, basically spoofing the server that I already auth'd. Is there not a cleaner way?
I've spent hours reading through the API docs and Auth docs, but haven't found and answer. If there is a page I've missed, please point me to it!
PS. I'm using the Calendars API through Python/Flask on Heroku, but that shouldn't matter.
An alternative approach is using a service account while sharing your calendar with that service account. See https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2ServiceAccount
So, you want to be remembered.
If you want to dispose of any kind of authenticacion but yet the user needs to be recognized you should be using a cookie.
On the server side that cookie should be used to select the offline token.
Of course, without that cookie the user needs to be authenticated in any way. I would make them reauth by Google so you get a new offline token.
Hope that it helps.
I have started building a C# asp.net website that will have the ability to post directly into Yammer (we have Yammer Enterprise). I have used the REST api to create a post and have also been able to create in impersonation token to post on behalf of other users. It works fine, but reading the documentation, the tokens seem to have an indefinite lifetime. Forgive me is this is a stupid question, but is there an expectation that as a developer, I should store the token locally (eg in a SQL table) and reuse local version for future API calls?
If the API call fails, then I assume I regenerate the token and re-store for future use?
Thanks
Andy
Yes, these tokens don't expire until an account is suspended or deleted in Yammer, or the user manually revokes the app. Until that changes you need to be very careful with handling these tokens. Applying encryption, permissions, and other techniques to secure your app is the best way to protect them.
You might also consider storing the time when the token was acquired or last used. Then delete the token after a period if it hasn't been used. That will protect the user.
In your UI make it clear what your app does with Yammer so that users authorizing it are aware of what they are opting into.