Authenticate service-to-service requests

Services hosted on Google Cloud with access to the Compute Metadata Server are able to generate an OAuth authentication token using the service account identity associated with the service. This token can be used to authenticate the service as a permitted invoker of a Cloud Run service.

Explore further

For detailed documentation that includes this code sample, see the following:

Code sample

Go

To authenticate to Cloud Run, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 


import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"io"

	"google.golang.org/api/idtoken"
)

// `makeGetRequest` makes a request to the provided `targetURL`
// with an authenticated client using audience `audience`.
func makeGetRequest(w io.Writer, targetURL string, audience string) error {
	// Example `audience` value (Cloud Run): https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/
	// (`targetURL` and `audience` will differ for non-root URLs and GET parameters)
	ctx := context.Background()

	// client is a http.Client that automatically adds an "Authorization" header
	// to any requests made.
	client, err := idtoken.NewClient(ctx, audience)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("idtoken.NewClient: %w", err)
	}

	resp, err := client.Get(targetURL)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("client.Get: %w", err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()
	if _, err := io.Copy(w, resp.Body); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("io.Copy: %w", err)
	}

	return nil
}

Java

To authenticate to Cloud Run, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

import com.google.api.client.http.GenericUrl;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpRequest;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpResponse;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.http.javanet.NetHttpTransport;
import com.google.auth.http.HttpCredentialsAdapter;
import com.google.auth.oauth2.GoogleCredentials;
import com.google.auth.oauth2.IdTokenCredentials;
import com.google.auth.oauth2.IdTokenProvider;
import java.io.IOException;

public class Authentication {

  // makeGetRequest makes a GET request to the specified Cloud Run or
  // Cloud Functions endpoint `serviceUrl` (must be a complete URL), by
  // authenticating with an ID token retrieved from Application Default
  // Credentials using the specified `audience`.
  //
  // Example `audience` value (Cloud Run): https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/
  public static HttpResponse makeGetRequest(String serviceUrl, String audience) throws IOException {
    GoogleCredentials credentials = GoogleCredentials.getApplicationDefault();
    if (!(credentials instanceof IdTokenProvider)) {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Credentials are not an instance of IdTokenProvider.");
    }
    IdTokenCredentials tokenCredential =
        IdTokenCredentials.newBuilder()
            .setIdTokenProvider((IdTokenProvider) credentials)
            .setTargetAudience(audience)
            .build();

    GenericUrl genericUrl = new GenericUrl(serviceUrl);
    HttpCredentialsAdapter adapter = new HttpCredentialsAdapter(tokenCredential);
    HttpTransport transport = new NetHttpTransport();
    HttpRequest request = transport.createRequestFactory(adapter).buildGetRequest(genericUrl);
    return request.execute();
  }
}

Node.js

To authenticate to Cloud Run, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment these variables before running the sample.
 */
// Example: https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/books/delete/12345
// const url = 'https://TARGET_HOSTNAME/TARGET_URL';

// Example (Cloud Run): https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/
// const targetAudience = 'https://TARGET_AUDIENCE/';

const {GoogleAuth} = require('google-auth-library');
const auth = new GoogleAuth();

async function request() {
  console.info(`request ${url} with target audience ${targetAudience}`);
  const client = await auth.getIdTokenClient(targetAudience);

  // Alternatively, one can use `client.idTokenProvider.fetchIdToken`
  // to return the ID Token.
  const res = await client.request({url});
  console.info(res.data);
}

request().catch(err => {
  console.error(err.message);
  process.exitCode = 1;
});

Python

To authenticate to Cloud Run, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment. 

import urllib

import google.auth.transport.requests
import google.oauth2.id_token


def make_authorized_get_request(endpoint, audience):
    """
    make_authorized_get_request makes a GET request to the specified HTTP endpoint
    by authenticating with the ID token obtained from the google-auth client library
    using the specified audience value.
    """

    # Cloud Run uses your service's hostname as the `audience` value
    # audience = 'https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/'
    # For Cloud Run, `endpoint` is the URL (hostname + path) receiving the request
    # endpoint = 'https://my-cloud-run-service.run.app/my/awesome/url'

    req = urllib.request.Request(endpoint)

    auth_req = google.auth.transport.requests.Request()
    id_token = google.oauth2.id_token.fetch_id_token(auth_req, audience)

    req.add_header("Authorization", f"Bearer {id_token}")
    response = urllib.request.urlopen(req)

    return response.read()

What's next

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