Authenticate users with Google Accounts

This page walks you through deploying an App Engine standard or flexible environment application and securing it with Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP). The quickstart includes sample code for an App Engine standard environment web app that verifies a logged-in user's name. This quickstart uses Cloud Shell to clone and deploy the sample application. You can use this quickstart to enable IAP for your own App Engine standard environment or App Engine flexible environment app.

If you plan to serve resources from a content delivery network (CDN), see the best practices guide for important information.

When an App Engine application consists of multiple services, it is possible to configure different IAP permissions on the different services, including making only some of the services publicly-accessible while keeping the others protected.

To follow step-by-step guidance for this task directly in the Google Cloud console, click Guide me:

Guide me

Before you begin

  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. If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

  4. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  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. If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

  7. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  8. To enable IAP for App Engine, you need to set up the App Engine instance. If you don't have your App Engine instance set up already, see Deploying App Engine for a complete walkthrough.

    IAP uses a Google-managed OAuth client to authenticate users. Only users within the organization can access the IAP-enabled application. If you want to allow access to users outside of your organization, see configure custom OAuth clients.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to authenticate users with Google Accounts, ask your administrator to grant you the IAP Policy Admin (roles/iap.policyAdmin) IAM role on your project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Enabling IAP

Console

The Google-managed OAuth client is not available when enabling IAP using the Google Cloud console.

Dynamic include file

If you haven't configured your project's OAuth consent screen, you'll be prompted to do so. To configure your OAuth consent screen, see Setting up your OAuth consent screen.

Setting up IAP access

  1. Go to the Identity-Aware Proxy page.
    Go to the Identity-Aware Proxy page
  2. Select the project you want to secure with IAP.
  3. Select the checkbox next to the resource you want to grant access to.
  4. On the right side panel, click Add principal.
  5. In the Add principals dialog that appears, enter the email addresses of groups or individuals who should have the IAP-secured Web App User role for the project.

    The following kinds of principals can have this role:

    Make sure to add a Google Account that you have access to.

  6. Select Cloud IAP > IAP-secured Web App User from the Roles drop-down list.
  7. Click Save.

Turning on IAP

  1. On the Identity-Aware Proxy page, under Applications, find the application you want to restrict access to. To turn on IAP for a resource,
  2. In the Turn on IAP window that appears, click Turn On to confirm that you want IAP to secure your resource. After you turn on IAP, it requires login credentials for all connections to your load balancer. Only principals with the IAP-Secured Web App User (roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor) role on the project will be given access.

gcloud

Before you set up your project and IAP, you need an up-to-date version of the gcloud CLI. For instructions on how to install the gcloud CLI, see Install the gcloud CLI.

  1. To authenticate, use the Google Cloud CLI and run the following command. 
    gcloud auth login
  2. Click the URL that appears and sign in.
  3. After you sign in, copy the verification code that appears and paste it in the command line.
  4. Run the following command to specify the project that contains the applications that you want to protect with IAP. 
    gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
  5. To enable IAP, run the following command. 
    gcloud iap web enable --resource-type=app-engine --versions=version
  6. Add principals who should have the IAP-secured Web App user role to the project. 
    gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
       --member=PRINCIPAL_IDENTIFIER \
       --role=roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor
    • Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.
    • Replace PRINCIPAL_IDENTIFIER with the necessary principals. This can be a type of domain, group, serviceAccount, or user. For example, user:[email protected].

After you enable IAP, you can use the gcloud CLI to modify the IAP access policy using the IAM role roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor. Learn more about managing roles and permissions.

API

  1. Run the following command to prepare a settings.json file. 

    cat << EOF > settings.json
{
"iap":
  {
    "enabled":true
  }
}
EOF

  2. Run the following command to enable IAP. 

    curl -X PATCH \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
-H "Accept: application/json" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d @settings.json \
"https://appengine.googleapis.com/v1/apps/PROJECT_ID?updateMask=iap"

After you enable IAP, you can use the Google Cloud CLI to modify the IAP access policy using the IAM role roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor. Learn more about managing roles and permissions.

Test user authentication

  1. Once the role is granted, the principals can access the app after authenticating with IAP. Access the app URL from a Google Account that was granted the IAP with the IAP-secured Web App User (roles/iap.httpsResourceAccessor) role.

  2. Use an incognito window in Chrome to access the app and sign in when prompted. Users who are granted the IAP-secured Web App User role and have successfully authenticated can access the app. Users who aren't granted the required role or fail to authenticate cannot access the app.

What's next