googleapis-dwd

Authorize Google Functions to use domain wide delegation (act as a user)

Applies to Google Run as well, maybe others too.

Based on SO answer, which is based on this answer.

You would expect that when domain wide delegation is enabled for a service account, you could easily use it in cloud functions to access user data from gmail, calendar, drive, etc. Just create new token with impersonated a user and correct scopes. That is not the case. New token must be signed with service account's private key and it is not recommended to spread the key around.

This library provides a way to call google cloud to sign the new key - without any need to access the private key inside the function.

Use case

service account with domain wide delegation enabled to access user data like calendar, drive, gmail, etc.
want to use that service account in a cloud function or cloud run to access user data
do NOT want to use service account json file, because that might be a security risk.

That scenario works when you test locally (with GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS), but fails when deployed to the cloud.

{
  "code" : 400,
  "errors" : [ {
    "domain" : "global",
    "message" : "Bad Request",
    "reason" : "failedPrecondition"
  } ],
  "message" : "Bad Request"
}

Install

Not yet published to npm, use github dependencies:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "googleapis-dwd": "artarf/googleapis-dwd"
  }
}

Usage

const dwd = require('googleapis-dwd')

const cred = await dwd("test@domain.com", ["https://desired/scope"])
// use cred to access user data
const result = await google.gmail({version: 'v1', auth: cred}).users.labels.list({userId: 'me'})

Requirements

Roles

Your service account needs 'Service Account Token Creator' role. You can create it with following command

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT-ID \
  --member=serviceAccount:SERVICE-ACCOUNT@PROJECT-ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
  --role=roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator

In order to deploy the function, your build service account needs 'Service Account User' role in the service account used for running the function.

You can create it with following command:

gcloud iam service-accounts add-iam-policy-binding SERVICE-ACCOUNT@PROJECT-ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
  --member serviceAccount:PROJECT-NUMBER@cloudbuild.gserviceaccount.com \
  --role roles/iam.serviceAccountUser

where

SERVICE-ACCOUNT@PROJECT-ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com is the build service account
PROJECT-NUMBER@cloudbuild.gserviceaccount.com is the function service account

IAM api enabled

gcloud services enable iam.googleapis.com

Alternative approach

You can utilize Application Default Credentials, but force it to use your json file. To be a good citizen, store your entire json file contents in Secret Manager.

Then, in your deployment...

gcloud functions deploy ... \
 ... \
  --set-secrets /etc/secrets/credential.json=YOUR-SECRET-NAME:latest \
  --set-env-vars GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/etc/secrets/credential.json

const subject = "your@email.address"
const scopes = ["https://desired/scope", ..]
const jwt = await new google.auth.GoogleAuth({ scopes, clientOptions: { subject } })
// use jwt to access user data
const result = await google.gmail({version: 'v1', auth: jwt}).users.labels.list({userId: 'me'})