I have created a service account for use with the Google Drive API as outlined here:
https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation
After all the reading I've done, my impression is that this service account should act on behalf of the actual account which is part of the Google Apps for Business domain being used.
With that, I would expect that no special permissions would be needed to be dealt with when dealing with Google Drive folders. However, after authenticating and trying to list the contents of a folder, nothing is shown.
If I add the service account email address specifically to the "share" list for the folder, everything seems to work as intended. I can list the files in the folder using the API.
My question is, is this the way it's supposed to be or am I missing something that would allow the service account to access folders on behalf of the actual account without having to specifically add the service account email address to the share list?
Thank you for your time.
You need to impersonate the user with his/her email. Go through the steps explained on https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation and use the snippets below for further coding reference.
Related
How to test safely an app that reads and writes to Google Drive using the API?
I created an app that runs on a server, that basically copies a template google doc to another directory, and then edits this new file.
In order to do that I:
created a service account,
delegated domain-wide authority to this service account
(https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount#delegatingauthority),
Then the app impersonates a user of the domain (always the same user) to access the API resources.
This app works, but it has 2 problems:
the service account has access to too many things. Ideally, I'd like it to have RW access to one folder only,
I'd like to create test credentials that would have access to another specific folder only, or even better, another drive.
Thanks!
Drive does not have permissions based on folders. The closest you can get is by creating an additional Service Account and then share the folder(s) to that SA.
You can also change the sharing setting for just one organisational unit,doing that all the folders whose owners are part of that OU will be able to share it outside or your domain making that the SA have only access to those folders.
Th company I work for recently switched to using Team Drive and we had multiple applications that would interact with Google Drive using the Google Drive API. The API calls would be authorized using Google Service Accounts and access to specific files would be given to an app by sharing the file with the Service Account email in the same way you would share a file with a normal user. Now that we've switched to Team Drive I'm unable to grant access to the Service Account as the email address associated with it is not considered part of our organization. I've also looked into adding the Service Account as a normal user in our organization through the Google Admin dashboard, but it only allows me to create new users, not include existing ones. The only solution I've found is to enable sharing with external parties which would allow me to share Team Drive files with the Service Account, which would be considered an external party. This solution is risky and incorrect as the applications using the Service Account are part of our organization. We also do not want enable sharing with external parties in general for security reasons.
I've followed the steps described in How to access Team Drive using service account with Google Drive .NET API v3 and they work, but as mentioned above they require sharing with external parties to be enabled which we do not want.
The ideal solution would be for the Service Account to be considered part of our organization, but I cannot find a way to do this.
I've also tried delegating Domain-Wide Authority to the Service Account as described in https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount#delegatingauthority, but as far as I understand this is not what I want as this will allow the Service Account to impersonate other users, but the reason we have a Service Account is for carrying out processes that happen automatically and which aren't associated with a specific user.
I've also followed the steps outlined here https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/reports/v1/guides/delegation#delegate_domain-wide_authority_to_your_service_account for white-listing a specific API service through the Google Admin Security interface, but this doesn't seem to do anything, and I'm not sure what it is supposed to do as I have already enabled the Drive API for this Service Account in the APIs & Services dashboard where I originally created the Service Account.
We're using R and so I've been using the googledrive package which has functions for working with Team Drives like:
googledrive::drive_find()
googledrive::team_drive_find()
googledrive::team_drive_get(id = "team-drive-id")
I would expect to be able to see the team drive, but I guess this is not possible unless the Service Account email is a member of the Team Drive which is not possible because the Service Account (which is linked to our organization through its owner) is not considered part of our organization.
I had the exact same issue and after trying a lot of approaches, landed on the solution below (++):
Create a group in Google Workspace. You can add any external identity/email to a group, since they can be used for multiple things. So add the role account to this group.
Google has recently come out with "Trust" rules, that allow granular sharing. You can share with a group. So I created a trust rule that allowed sharing of any data source (easier than restricting who can share since file/shared drive ownership affects this rule) to only the group that contains the service account. Now external sharing is permitted, but only to the role account.
Lastly, share the drive with that role account.
++ Note that I also had followed the majority of steps above including the GCP project creation and domain-wide delegation before this portion, but was similarly stuck getting a 403 for access rights.
My organization has a project that is using Google Drive to store files. What we want to do is to show the contents of the Drive on a website.
I'm not really sure how to go about this. Most of the examples are showing authenticating the user accessing the site.
Right now, what I am thinking of doing is to use a service account. I have a Node app running a service account, which I just followed from the samples in the Node.js samples. I realized that the contents shown from running the app are the contents of the Drive of the service account.
What I wanted to happen was show the contents of the Drive that owns the project.
I'm not sure if you can get around authentication when it comes to standard User Accounts.
But you don't really need to impersonate a User Account. There is a alternative solution. From your User account, create a folder and move all the files needed by the app into it. Then share the folder with the service account and grant it edit access. To share the folder you'll need to know the email address of the service account which you can find in your Google Developer's Console. To get to the service account's page, click the menu icon (the triple bar) at the top left and select IAM Admin. On that page there should be a menu option for service accounts, when selected it will provide you with a list of all your service accounts and their corresponding email addresses.
We have a google corporate account and need to transfer ALL of a user's google drive files to another account in certain instances. We want to do what is described at the following link for "all files" but programatically via the latest Drive API http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1247799
We are currently using the following API version(s) below, coupled with domain wide authority delegation as described at https://developers.google.com/drive/delegation and are able to see a user's files, iterate over them etc.
google-api-services-drive 1.14.2-beta
google-api-client 1.14.1-beta
My question is this: it appears that the only way to change permissions is by fileId by fileId etc. Instead of having to traverse and iterate over an entire set of user's files, if we just want to transfer ALL of a user's files to another particular user: is there a way in the API to do this (ownership transfer for ALL files) rather than individual requests file/by file?
Also when transferring ownershisp, must the transferee be in the same #domain or can it be another #domain we manage? I read somewhere that you can only transfer to owners in the same domain. Does this still hold true? For instance we manage #myCompany.com and have our corporate account registered under that, however that shell account has several sub-domains within it. We would like to transfer files from users in the sub-domains to a central user in the #myCompany domain.
You need to change permissions file by file, there is no updateAll type of functionality at the moment.
You cant transfer the ownership to another domain's user. Ownership can only be transferred to another user in the same domain as the current owner.
This answer doesn't directly answer your question, but it could be helpful for both you and future visitors.
As of now, you can mass transfer files to new users with Google's new Admin console. It doesn't let you filter for specific folders, but it does allow you to transfer all of one user's Drive files to a second user.
I know you were trying to create something which uses the API to iterate through folders and files, and you probably have a very specific use-case in mind. However, in the case where you have employees leaving, or you need to transfer everything, using the following method is fast and simple.
Open the Google Admin console
Go to Google Apps > Drive
Click on "Transfer ownership"
Fill out both user fields and submit
This process will even email both users once the process is completed.
You can do this with a single call to the Data Transfer API
Exactly what is needed but only with API!
Open the Google Admin console
Go to Google Apps > Drive
Click on "Transfer ownership"
Fill out both user fields and submit
This process will even email both users once the process is completed.
If this is not possible via API calls, then there is no point deleting a user using API.
I have a web app in php mysql, I want to use one google drive account for my app.
Can I use my app's accounts instead of google users for privilages.
I read in SDK I can use service account to login without promting user, but I don't know how to share or give permissions files for custom users.
In api reference I found this:
"The user is not necessarily yet a Google user (e.g. if a file or folder is shared with an email address that does not yet have an associated Google account). Example: 1111459233037698895607".
How a custom user in my app should get a token for own privilages.
I am not exactly sure what you want to achieve here, but if you want to use your own permission system, you can't. You can, however, apply read/write/owner permissions to files to mirror your own permissions.
If I have totally got the wrong idea, please explain.