I've been trying to find a way to interact with Google's API (specifically, the Compute Engine API) without having the user authorise via a consent screen each time I need to reauthorise with Google.
The requests will be made when no user is present, so not having to authorise via a consent screen is an absolute must.
I'm using Go and the Go API Client Library.
Can anybody explain a method to achieve what I need to?
You should take a look at service accounts. They utilize the public/private key pair to authorize calls to Google API.
Google Developers has one very nice document explaining how service accounts work:
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2ServiceAccount
Here's how generate a service account:
https://developers.google.com/console/help/new/#serviceaccounts
You will also find the code samples in the first doc, but unfortunately not in Go.
However, there are some comments that I found here:
https://code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/wiki/GettingStarted
Hope it helps.
Related
Should I use a Service Account or an OAuth 2.0 Client ID?
I'm struggling to understand Google's documentation on authenticating for their APIs. I'm creating a basic application that will help users add and modify Google Calendar events for a single Google account (the account is shared between all users). I only need the application to access that one account, it'll never need to access any others.
It seems to me that Service Account would be best for this, but Google's documentation suggests Service Accounts should only be used for automated processes (unless I'm misunderstanding). For instance this page contains the following, describing when to use Service Accounts.
Would my application qualify as acting on the users behalf?
If so, I would want to use OAuth Client ID credentials, which will ask the user to sign in to a google account. In this case, is there a way I can guarantee they only sign in to the one account I want modified?
I can't find any decent documentation on the OAuth authentication requests to figure this out myself. If there is any could you point me there?
I'm sure I'm misunderstanding something basic here, but thank you for any help!
First off you should know that you can only use service accounts with Google aclendar api if you have a google workspace domain account.
You can then set up a calendar and a domain user that the service account can act on behalf of to control the access of that calendar.
Assuming that your application is going to preform all actions on this calendar then yes i would say that you could use a service account for this. If your app bacly has a ui with a calendar on it your just using google calendar to store the data.
However if you intend to share this calendar with the users themselves, this way they could see it within their own google Calendar account. Im not sure a service account would be the way to go.
If you want the users to be able to see it and make changes then you may want to just use Oauth2. Grant them access to the calendar and then request access to their calendar account.
Drawback to that option is going to be the verification process. You will get access to all the users calendars and your going to need write access.
If you can go with a service account you really should consider it it will save you a lot of hassle with verification.
I'm faced with a difficult scenario regarding OAuth 2 authentication and Google's Calendar API.
I am attempting to write a PHP script which processes my personal calendar data after being triggered by a POST call from an external source. However, I am having trouble granting the script access to my account. Since the script runs entirely in the background, there is never an opportunity for me to enter the authorization code which is required for PHP command line tools making Google API requests.
I have looked into Service Accounts, which grant access to personal data without individual approval, but unfortunately this is only available to G Suite users, which I am not.
I have also attempted to run my script manually, enter the code to authenticate, then run it from my external source. This doesn't work either, because the authorization codes are apparently only good for the same mode of access where it was entered, and the response to the external source still shows as asking for the code.
Lastly, please note that responding with the authorization code from the external source is not an option. Which I can activate the trigger, I cannot change how it works or the data it passes.
TL;DR: How do I grant a PHP script (which runs only in the background) access to my personal Google Calendar data?
Thanks in advance!
Articulating this question actually helped me better formulate my Google searches, and I found the answer!
I'll leave this question/answer here so somebody can hopefully benefit from it -
Turns out that the Service Account is the way to go, but instead of trying to access your account's data via the service account, you need to share the calendars in question with the generated service account email address. Essentially, this makes the service account a "co-owner" of the calendar. Then, you simply make the request to the service account's own information.
Hope this helps!
I'm trying to write a CLI script (ruby) to manage my youtube videos. Technically I'm updating a script that I used in 2012 to do this. It appears that since 2012, youtube has discontinued the simple client authentication mechanism and moved to OAUTH2 (though I'm not totally sure).
I'm wouldn't be the first to say that OAUTH2 is hell (just google it). It's been 3 hours and I still haven't gotten my old script to even authenticate with google (using the youtube_it ruby gem).
I simply do not understand why I would need to use OAUTH to access my own account on Google? What am I missing? I thought OAUTH was so that separate users could give access to applications to temporarily access their data.
Is there another way? What am I missing. As one blogger commented OAUTH2 is enough to make one want to change careers. Even the lead dev quit the project.
The Youtube API docs is specific in stating that if you're going to use Youtube API (or other Google APIs), you must learn how to use OAuth:
If your application will use any API methods that require user
authorization, read the authentication guide to learn how to implement
OAuth 2.0 authorization.
Youtube has a Ruby Quickstart sample which includes the OAuth process.
I simply do not understand why I would need to use OAUTH to access my own account on Google?
I think OAuth answers exactly that question, "how will Google products know if you are who you claim to be?"
Read the OAuth Google guide for more info.
OAuth 2 is an authorization framework that enables applications to obtain limited access to user accounts on an HTTP service, such as Facebook, GitHub, and google. It works by delegating user authentication to the service that hosts the user account, and authorizing third-party applications to access the user account. OAuth 2 provides authorization flows for web and desktop applications, and mobile devices.
for more detail study :-
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749
I have this example - Embed API Third Party Visualizations - working locally and on a test server, but I'm unsure of what I need to do to ONLY display our organization's Google Analytics data instead of the user's personal GA account.
I created the project and clientID within our org's Google Account, but I'm obviously not understanding something big here.
I'm completely new to both GA's API and oAuth in general, so while I'm sure this has been answered multiple times, I wasn't completely sure which direction to look in. If someone can give a helpful nudge in the right direction I'll happily be on my way.
Thanks everyone!
Embeded API uses Oauth2 to authenticate. Oauth2 requires that a user give you access to their Google Analytics data.
You want to show your person Google Analytics data to other users. Normally I would say you should use a Service account, a service account gives the application direct access to a specific account it has to be set up like you would add a user to Google Analyitcs. The problem is the Embeded API uses JavaScript, for security reasons its probably not a good idea to use a service account with JavaScript. I also think it may be against Googles terms of service to use a service account with JavaScript. That being said I have never found anyone who has gotten a service account to work with JavaScript probably for the reasons I just stated.
Drop the embedded API and switch to a server sided language of some kind and code it yourself. What you want to do cant be done with the embedded API.
I have a google calendar that I have marked as shared. it stores all appointments for the day.
I have a webpage. from the webpage, the user enters a date and I use the google api (javascript) to pull back all info from my shared calendar for that date and present it to the user.
I also want the user to be able to make appointments during free times on any given day.
problem is, I must be signed in to my google account. if I am NOT signed in, I get a little popup asking for my userid/password.
how do I get rid of that? I had hoped that making the calendar shared and specifying the client ID and api key (assigned via Google's API Console) would have been enough.
I've run across this: http://cornempire.net/2012/01/08/part-2-oauth2-and-configuring-your-application-with-google/ which explains doing this via Oath and refresh tokens in PHP.
unfortunately, I'm doing this in javascript and MUST do it from the client side. is that possible?
I think you should look into using a service acccount for this.
http://code.google.com/p/google-api-php-client/wiki/OAuth2#Service_Accounts
By using a service account you wont have to worry about people loging in. They will have access to the calender for the service account.
Update: I have searched for examples of how to do this in Javascript and have been unable to find any. After considering this issue for a while now i have come to the conculsiton that even if you could use a service account via javascript for security reasons its probably not a good idea.
Unfortuantly this leaves me to beleave that the anwser to your question is No. You cant do this client sided. If you use normal OAuth2 its still going to prompt you for the autentication. You need to try and reconsider a server sidded option. PHP for example