When creating Google Drive applications there are a number of permission "scopes" that can be specified to indicate to the users what permissions are required to run that application.
One of these permissions:
Perform these operations when I'm not using the application
Causes a lot of concern amongst our users. We could not find any definitive explanation of what causes this permission to be listed.
The only possibility we could think of is that using server-side flow for the OAuth2 means that the server might be still syncronising after the browser has been closed and so this has to be flagged up.
If that's the case, will using JS direct to Drive (no proxy server) mean that this permission will not be requested?
This is due to the OAuth2 flavour you chose.
You probably have taken the web server flow flavour, which build a grant URL with the parameter access_type = offline.
This allows you to obtain a refresh token, so you can access your user's files after he has used your app.
You can replace this access_type paramater to access_type=online but you wont get a refresh token. You will be able to acces your users'files only for one hour. After that, you will have to request a new access token to access his files.
I encourage you to read this page where each of the flow are explained.
The official specifications are a good source of information too.
Related
I am working on an Identity management application, using which my goal is to manage users on Box application.
I was going through Box documentation, and there are two ways for authentication
OAuth 2.0, which has redirection URI as required parameter. And due to which I cannot make use of it, since I will not be able to enter username and password and Authorize dynamically using my Java code.
Reference: https://box-content.readme.io/reference#oauth-2
JWT authentication, this I can use in my code and successfully get Access token. But problem here is, this access token can only be used to manage App Users (who will not have login to Box website).
Reference: https://box-content.readme.io/docs/box-developer-edition
So, is there any other authentication mechanism which I can use for getting Access token for managing Box users?
Regards,
Sandeep
The current best option is #1 with a process like this:
Create a Box application with the 'Manage an Enterprise' scope enabled.
Use a web-based access token generator (such as this or this) to get an initial access/refresh token pair. Save these somewhere safe (flat file, DB).
Code your application to initialize itself with the access/refresh token pair from its saved location.
When the access/refresh token pair is refreshed, write them out to the save location.
If your application runs across multiple nodes/processes this approach will require some (painful) coordination between them. I believe Box is working on some improvements in this area, so you may not have to live with this for long.
I am using the Permissions: get endpoint to check if the user has permission the document.
while i am using this endpoint i came across strange behaviour. it was like this as i need to find out if a given user has permission to edit a given document.
1) if the document directly shared edit permission for that user the above endpoint gives me the correct permission object.
2) if the document is shared with the domain privileges (Anyone at who has the link can edit) . In this case every time it gives me a error response.
My view in this case in the google document view even its the domain level share permission or user level share permission the user get the correct set of workflow. But to check these permission levels from the API endpoints does not works as expected.
Is this a known issue? Is their a another way to check the file permission if it shared under the domain level?
Thanks
Given the fact that there is some missing information (i.e. error message, code snippet, screenshots etc.), I'll make an attempt to answer your question here :)
To check for the file permission, it can be achieved in the following ways:
via Drive API
The Permissions.get resource would be ideal for checking the
permission for a user or domain. You may also try using the
Permissions.list, which would lists all file's permissions.
Google Drive UI
Right click on the file, select "Share..."
Click Advanced
With that being said, I noticed in my testing, if the file (doc) is shared under the domain level and you are not performing this under the same domain, both the view and API resource will return an error response. I suggest making sure when you're calling through the API you're using the appropriate domain user. Hope this helps and Good luck!
The Permissions.Get operation can tell if you a file was shared directly to a user, but it can't tell you if a user has access to the file via a group permission, domain permission, or anyone permission.
Using a Permissions.List operation you might be able to tell if the file is shared to anyone or if it's shared to the user's domain (based on, for example, the user's email address).
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.
If I specify access_type=offline in the auth url and a user attempts to auth a second time I get a box that says it is asking for offline access.
I would have expected it to be already authorised and so not require additional permissions
Any ideas?
Edit:
A bit more info. The first time around it makes no mention to the user of needing offline access. I would have thought the offline permission to be mentioned in the original auth anyway.
Edit 2:
Some more info on my use case. It is possible in our system for a person to have two accounts but then use the same google drive account. This means that we have no way of knowing that user has already authorized with google and so have to present the authorization again for the second user.
The first time around (for user 1) you are told that the app is asking for :
View and manage Google Drive files that you have opened or created
with this app
View and manage the files and documents in your Google
Drive
The second time around (for user 2) you are told the app is asking to:
Have offline access
This seems wrong to me.
As an aside:
The whole "have offline access" statement is very confusing for a user and also quite misleading. Most people assume this means the app can read the contents of your pc. In fact it means that the app can authenticate with your account with out you being there (i.e. using a refresh token).
I have a general comprehension question about OAuth access token retrieval for a Google Chrome Extension.
I have a popup HTML window in the browser that uses Jquery to request data from the server (a LAMP stack on AWS). The data is presented by PHP scripts which access a MySQL database. All very basic stuff.
I now want to implement a push messaging system using Google Cloud Messaging to alert users of new content that they can check. However I don't really understand where I should request the access token and how to listen for the response. I figure it should be in the PHP scripts but all the Google documentation that I've read states the user has to be present in order to allow access to push messaging. That tells me I should put it in the JavaScript but I feel this is a bad idea because every user could potentially request an access token when I think I only need one every 3000 seconds or so. If my app was completely implemented in PHP I'm sure this would be possible and now I'm worried that splitting it up like this leaves push messaging out of the question. Am I missing a crucial detail or just out of luck?
If the data access you need isn't user-specific, then you're right, there's no good reason to get a separate token for each user. Check out https://developers.google.com/accounts/cookbook/roles/Apps which discusses some options.