Set up the User Invitation API

This page explains how to set up the Cloud Identity User Invitation API.

Enable the API and set up credentials

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  3. Enable the Cloud Identity API, if it is not already enabled.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the API

  4. Create a service account:

    1. Ensure that you have the Create Service Accounts IAM role (roles/iam.serviceAccountCreator) and the Project IAM Admin role (roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    2. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create service account page.

      Go to Create service account
    3. Select your project.

    4. In the Service account name field, enter a name. The Google Cloud console fills in the Service account ID field based on this name.

      In the Service account description field, enter a description. For example, Service account for quickstart.

    5. Click Create and continue.

    6. Grant the Service Account Token Creator role to the service account.

      To grant the role, find the Select a role list, then select Service Account Token Creator.

    7. Click Continue.

    8. Click Done to finish creating the service account.

  5. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  6. Enable the Cloud Identity API, if it is not already enabled.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the API

  7. Create a service account:

    1. Ensure that you have the Create Service Accounts IAM role (roles/iam.serviceAccountCreator) and the Project IAM Admin role (roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    2. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create service account page.

      Go to Create service account
    3. Select your project.

    4. In the Service account name field, enter a name. The Google Cloud console fills in the Service account ID field based on this name.

      In the Service account description field, enter a description. For example, Service account for quickstart.

    5. Click Create and continue.

    6. Grant the Service Account Token Creator role to the service account.

      To grant the role, find the Select a role list, then select Service Account Token Creator.

    7. Click Continue.

    8. Click Done to finish creating the service account.

Install the Python client library

To install the Python client library, run the following command:

  pip install --upgrade google-api-python-client google-auth \
    google-auth-oauthlib google-auth-httplib2

For more information about setting up your Python development environment, see the Python Development Environment Setup Guide.

Authenticate and instantiate a client

To call the User Invitation API as a service account, you must use domain-wide delegation (DWD). You can authenticate the service account using Application Default Credentials (ADC) or a service account key.

To authenticate as an administrator without DWD, use end-user OAuth 2.0 credentials with the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-identity.userinvitations scope instead. For more information, see Using OAuth 2.0 for web server applications.

Set up domain-wide delegation

To use domain-wide delegation, you must grant the service account authority to impersonate an administrator. Audit logs show any service account actions as the impersonated user.

For instructions, see Delegate domain-wide authority to your service account.

To authorize the service account, provide the following scope:

  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-identity.userinvitations

Instantiate a client

To instantiate a client, choose an authentication method. We recommend using Application Default Credentials (ADC) if your code is running on Google Cloud or using Workload Identity Federation.

ADC 

from google.auth import iam
from google.auth.transport import requests
import google.auth
from google.oauth2 import service_account

INITIAL_SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/iam']
CI_SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-identity.userinvitations']
TOKEN_URI = "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token"

def create_delegated_credentials(
  user_email: str
) -> google.auth.credentials.Credentials:
  """Creates delegated credentials for the user.

  Args:
    user_email: The administrator email to call as.

  Returns:
    The delegated credentials for the user.
  """

  # Fetch application default credentials (ADC)
  credentials, _ = google.auth.default(scopes=INITIAL_SCOPES)

  # Populate account information
  request = requests.Request()
  credentials.refresh(request)

  # Create an IAM signer
  signer = iam.Signer(request, credentials,
                      credentials.service_account_email)

  # Create domain-wide delegated (DWD) credentials
  delegated_credentials = service_account.Credentials(
      signer=signer,
      service_account_email=credentials.service_account_email,
      token_uri=TOKEN_URI,
      scopes=CI_SCOPES,
      subject=user_email
  )

  return delegated_credentials

Service account key 

from google.oauth2 import service_account
import googleapiclient.discovery

SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-identity.userinvitations']
SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE = '/path/to/service-account-file.json'

def create_service():
  credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(
    SERVICE_ACCOUNT_FILE, scopes=SCOPES)
  delegated_credentials = credentials.with_subject('user@altostrat.com')

  service_name = 'cloudidentity'
  api_version = 'v1'
  service = googleapiclient.discovery.build(
    service_name,
    api_version,
    credentials=delegated_credentials)

  return service

After running this code, you can begin making calls to the User Invitation API.

What's next