Calling a Google Apps Script web app with access token

Question

I need to execute a GAS service on behalf of a user that is logged to my system. So I have her/his access token. I would like somehow to transfer the token to the web app an

Answer 1

Martin's answer worked for me in the end, but when I was making a prototype there was a major hurdle.

I needed to add the following scope manually, as the "automatic scope detection system" of google apps script did not ask for it: "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly". This resulted in UrlFetchApp.fetch always giving 401 with additional information I did not understand. Logging this additional information would show html, including the following string

Sorry, unable to open the file at this time.</p><p> Please check the address and try again.

I still don't really understand why "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly" would be necessary. It may have to do with the fact that we can use the /dev url, but who may use the /dev url is managed is checked using the drive permissions of the script file.

That said, the following setup then works for me (it also works with doGet etc, but I chose doPost). I chose to list the minimally needed scopes explicitly in the manifest file, but you can also make sure the calling script will ask for permissions to access drive in different ways. We have two google apps script projects, Caller and WebApp.

In the manifest file of Caller, i.e. appsscript.json

{
  ...
  "oauthScopes": 
  [
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.readonly",
    "https://www.googleapis.com/auth/script.external_request"]
}

In Code.gs of Caller

function controlCallSimpleService(){

  var webAppUrl ='https://script.google.com/a/DOMAIN/macros/s/id123123123/exec';

//  var webAppUrl = 
//  'https://script.google.com/a/DOMAIN/macros/s/id1212121212/dev'

  var token = ScriptApp.getOAuthToken();

  var options = {
    'method' : 'post'
    , 'headers': {'Authorization': 'Bearer '+  token}
    , muteHttpExceptions: true
  };

  var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch(webAppUrl, options);
  Logger.log(response.getContentText());
}

In Code.gs of WebApp (the web app being called)

function doPost(event){
  return ContentService.createTextOutput("Hello World");
}

Answer 2

I found a way! Just include the following header in the request:

Authorization: Bearer <user's_access_token>

Answer 3

The hard answer is NO you can't use the built-in services of Apps Script with a service token. But if you already have the token for a user generated by a service account, access to the users data is pretty similar to any other language. All calls would be to the REST interface of the service your token is scoped for.

Take this small script for example. It will build a list of all the user's folders and return them as JSON:

 function doGet(e){
  var token = e.parameter.token;
  var folderArray = [];
  var pageToken = "";
  var query = encodeURIComponent("mimeType = 'application/vnd.google-apps.folder'");
  var params = {method:"GET",
                contentType:'application/json',
                headers:{Authorization:"Bearer "+token},
                muteHttpExceptions:true
               };

  var url = "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files?q="+query;

  do{
    var results = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url,params); 
    if(results.getResponseCode() != 200){
      Logger.log(results);
      break;
    }

    var folders = JSON.parse(results.getContentText());
    url = "https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v2/files?q="+query;  

    for(var i in folders.items){
      folderArray.push({"name":folders.items[i].title, "id":folders.items[i].id})
    }

    pageToken = folders.nextPageToken;
    url += "&pageToken="+encodeURIComponent(pageToken);
  }while(pageToken != undefined)

  var folderObj = {};
  folderObj["folders"] = folderArray;      
  return ContentService.createTextOutput(JSON.stringify(folderObj)).setMimeType(ContentService.MimeType.JSON);
}

You do miss out on a lot of the convenience that makes Apps Script so powerful, mainly the built in services, but all functionality is available through the Google REST APIs.