CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsgoogle-cloud-platformgoogle-cloud-storage
TommyBs
TommyBs

Reputation: 9648

GCP - Compute Engine to Storage per group/user access ACL with custom Auth system

I've built a simple messaging application with NodeJS on GCP that, at the moment consists of a single compute engine instance. I'm using this to learn the stack and how GCP sits together.

My application has it's own user/password registration system and allows users to message each other in 'groups'. These groups can consist of 1...n users and one user is responsible for adding/removing users from a group. They can do this at any time.

I want to allow the users to upload pics and ideally I will then store them in Google Storage. But I want to make sure that only users in a room where an image is uploaded can view that file.I know that GCP makes use of IAM roles etc. but with the authentication being in my system am I expected to update IAM policies every time via the API? In a scaled solution would this work?

My initial thought is that I should do the authentication at an app level. e.g my Compute Engine instance can talk to Storage so when a user requests to a view an image by its url - such as example.com/uploads/:id

I then validate that the current user can view the upload with id :id and if they can, then serve the image from the app. Would this work? Would it be compatible with utilising Google CDN? Is there a preferred solution for doing something like this bearing in mind I'm not using firebase (which I understand can use access tokens for auth) but I'm using my own authentication based on username/password combos with sessions?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 236

Answers (2)

Katayoon
Katayoon

Reputation: 610

For examples of sharing and collaboration scenarios that involve setting bucket and object ACLs, you may take a look at Sharing and Collaboration. As you mentioned and also noted here, you can create a service that authenticates users and redirects them to a URL signed by a service account and this solution helps the scaling amount of users as well.

You must give Cloud CDN permission to read the objects by adding the Cloud CDN service account to Cloud Storage's ACLs for restricting the users on reading the objects.

I should also add that Cloud Storage is integrated with Firebase and you may acquire Firebase Security Rules for Cloud Storage to authenticate and authorize the users.

Upvotes: 2

TommyBs
TommyBs

Reputation: 9648

So it looks like I actually have 2 options here.

I can use signed urls https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control/signed-urls#signed-urls and grant temporary access to the files to the users in question. I would just need to regenerate this whenever required.

My second option (event though I said I don't want to migrate) is to use Firebase Auth. I wasn't aware it actually supported email/password migration and validation and is actually free regardless of number of users. The only thing I'm not sure on here is how Storage is configured with relation to my current GCP project.

Upvotes: 2

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