Security of GAS for G-sites? - google-apps-script

I want to create a script that runs on a Google site. The script would perform a specialized calculation for a given user and then display the answer for the user. The script would depend upon user input, but the code itself should not be viewable by the user. I want the code to exist in a "black box" so that the calculation formula can be kept secret. Is this possible?
I searched the documentation, but only found this, which does not address this question:
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/services/authorization#permissions_and_types_of_scripts

Whether your App script is embedded in a site or written as a standalone script does not change a lot of things... the only difference will be the way you include it on a page as a gadget.
If it is embedded it will be available from a list of scripts in the page editing, if not you'll have to use the .exec url of the deployed webapp.
Anyway, that does not change the way people will have access to the app.
You can define these parameter when you deploy the app (which is mandatory in both cases), allowing for anonymous access or requiring to be logged in.
If I understood you correctly, you would like to restrict the access to some people but not share the code.
Depending on how you defined the access mode above and wether you are using a Google Apps inside a domain or not, you will be able to do it using 2 ways :
in a domain you can get the logged user identity and use that to accept/deny showing the app.
in a "normal" gmail account you will have to implement some sort of logging feature to request a user name and password to give access to the active part of the app.
In both case you never need to share the script itself, this sharing parameter is independent from the webapp access.
I hope I understood your question correctly... if not, feel free to comment.

You might check out the Private Functions section of the following page.....the example is similar to what you're referring to, I think.
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/html/communication?hl=ru
I don't fully understand how they work and haven't used them myself, but I bookmarked it to figure out later. Maybe another user who understands Private Functions better can explain...

Related

Can I get access rights back from users?

I am considering to create an app for the first time and I am not sure I understand google‘s terms and conditions well. According to what I read, if I give access to some users, I will not be able to get it back and besides, google will get the right to distribute it further. Is this right?
Creating a WebApp with limited access
When you deploy a WebApp you can choose how to execute the WebApp and who has access to it:
You execute either as
You
The user accessing the App
And the App can be accessed by either
Only you
Anyone in your domain
Anyone
You are not able to select only specific users to have access.
However, obviously only the users with whom you will share the WebApp URL will have access to it.
Also, you can use within the WebApp the method getActiveUser() to retrieve the identity of the user and implement a conditional statement that runs the rest of the script only if the active user is one of the "allowed" ones.
Very important: After deploying the WebApp for the first time, you can deploy it as a new version as often as desired and change thereby the execution and access permissions which makes it easy to revoke access

Warning: Embedded web apps are still subject to access permissions

As title says...
BUT, I've made a web app for output some result based on a data search using parameters submitted in a google form in my google site.
I work in a school so no way that all teachers has, or want to use, or want to waste time just for know which labs are available in some time slots.
I really need that everyone can run web app ... obviously I deployed it with access anyone, even anonimous but
https://sites.google.com/itsluigicasale.gov.it/prenotazionilab/trova-un-laboratorio-libero
have I made some errors?
is there any workaround?
I'd like to use it without access or ask for permission for the users

How to give write permissions only to UI app to write data to a Spreadsheet

I have developed a web application using Google scripts UIApp class which will collect the data of work done by each associate and writes data to my spreadsheet.
Problem I'm facing is I have to share my spreadsheet to all the associates with write permission where it enables them to see others data. I want to hide this sheet from all but they should also be able write data using the web application I shared.
Please let me know for more details or any code snippets
Note: I have Not used Google Form because I need change the list values dynamically based on the selection and the type of user.
You can deploy the app you have built with UiApp to be executed as "you" and allow access to anyone. The spreadsheet won't need to be shared anymore but as it is anyone (even anonymous if you are not in a domain) will be able to use it...
You'll have to implement an access control yourself, again this will be different in a domain or in a "normal" gmail account (in a domain you can get the user email, in a gmail account you can't)
(since apparently I can't comment.. but to follow up on this question.)
Is there a best practice for running as something other than really-yourself?
Say a team is managing it, or your a contractor who won't stay with the company, and so you're account and access is likely to go away.
I assume it results in creating a shared account, or perhaps a groups or something? You start getting into all sorts of ACL issues. And a simple ``run as yourself'' doesn't seem like a good long term solution.

Access Google Drive API without creating WebApp?

First I apologize if I'm a dolt and am missing something obvious, but I've spent a few hours scouring documentation and am lost.
I'm trying to write a python script that will upload a bunch of images to a single user's Google Drive. The user already exists and will never change. I am not writing a web app and don't plan to use any user interface whatsoever. Everything will be done through code.
As best I can understand from the Google documentation, I have two choices:
1) Write a web app and register it to use the Drive DSK. This of course requires having urls and such for the web app.
2) Create a service account, which ties my "app" to a new service account email.
Neither of these options works for me. Is there any way to simply log in to a single user account and access their drive through python scripting?
There is a deprecated API called ClientLogin that would enable you to use the username and password for a login to access that Drive data.
But the basic idea is that you should be using something more secure -- from your users' point of view -- that allows them to authorize you without giving you their password.
For your use case it is possible that the user is you or someone you know and that you are accessing their account through a more personal kind of authorization. In that case, ClientLogin may be your best choice. If this is an application designed to be used by arbitrary users, the deprecation of ClientLogin is for a good reason and I would urge you to bite the bullet and choose one of the supported options.
The correct solution is to separate the authorization phase from the access phase. The authorization process needs to be run one time only, and can be done from a simple web site. The result of this is a refresh token which is analogous to a username/password. You will need to be aware of the security implications. Make sure you only grant drive.file scope to minimise the impact of a security breach.
Since you are uploading images, you might also want to look at the picassa api.

Oauth for open source code

I am looking at creating a good google chrome extension for tumblr.
Now tumblr uses Oauth as it's authentication method.
So my question becomes.
Do I:
Distribute a single key with the application and hope people are nice enough to not use it for illegitimate purposes.
Put in the options the ability for a user to enter their own key, hence asking each user to register an application.
Create an intermediary on my server that makes the actual request.
Something else?
I also had to consider this for my Template extension when using OAuth to communicate with the goo.gl URL shortener service on the user's behalf.
After reading Chrome's OAuth tutorial I managed to implement this simply using the following;
ChromeExOAuth.initBackgroundPage({
access_url: 'https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthGetAccessToken',
app_name: chrome.i18n.getMessage('app_name'),
authorize_url: 'https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthAuthorizeToken',
consumer_key: 'anonymous',
consumer_secret: 'anonymous',
request_url: 'https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthGetRequestToken',
scope: 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/urlshortener'
});
This is surrounded by quite a bit of logic due to the complexity of the extension but this results in the user simply being shown a page (on a new tab) the first time they attempt to shorten a URL using my goo.gl implementation. Here the user can decide to allow/deny the authentication. Since this is only done once (unless the user later removes it from their list of authorized applications) I thought this was fine and my users seem to agree.
I did also provide an option to toggle OAuth on/off but I'm guessing this will always be required for the tumblr API. On that note I must admit I'm not familiar with that particular API so I'm afraid I can't help you further.