Blob.generate_signed_url() failing to AttributeError

15
votes

So I'm trying to produce temporary globally readable URLs for my Google Cloud Storage objects using the google-cloud-storage Python library (https://googlecloudplatform.github.io/google-cloud-python/latest/storage/blobs.html) - more specifically the Blob.generate_signed_url() method. I doing this from within a Compute Engine instance in a command line Python script. And I keep getting the following error:

AttributeError: you need a private key to sign credentials.the credentials you are currently using <class 'oauth2cl
ient.service_account.ServiceAccountCredentials'> just contains a token. see https://google-cloud-python.readthedocs
.io/en/latest/core/auth.html?highlight=authentication#setting-up-a-service-account for more details.

I am aware that there are issues with doing this from within GCE (https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-auth-library-python/issues/50) but I have created a new Service Account credentials following the instructions here: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control/create-signed-urls-program and my key.json file most certainly includes a private key. Still I am seeing that error.

This is my code: 

keyfile = "/path/to/my/key.json"
credentials = ServiceAccountCredentials.from_json_keyfile_name(keyfile)
expiration = timedelta(3) # valid for 3 days
url = blob.generate_signed_url(expiration, method="GET",
                               credentials=credentials)

I've read through the issue tracker here https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-python/issues?page=2&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen and nothing related jumps out so I am assuming this should work. Cannot see what's going wrong here.

2
pythongoogle-cloud-storagegoogle-compute-enginegoogle-cloud-python
I am currently hunting the solution for this, as well, because I need a way to sign upload URLs without physical access to a key file. I got this working when a service account key (.json) is configured to GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, but, perhaps like you, I want my code to operate with the default credentials implicit to instances on GCP. Did you solve it? – ThatsAMorais
When connecting local machine to storage, we can use credentials from json. But when reading file on app engine from storage- i dont know how to get credentials. docs say default service account should just work fine. But I always get error ' need private key to sign' – Aseem

2 Answers

9
votes

I was having the same issue. Ended up fixing it by starting the storage client directly from the service account json.

storage_client = storage.Client.from_service_account_json('path_to_service_account_key.json')

I know I'm late to the party but hopefully this helps!

8
votes

Currently, it's not possible to use blob.generate_signed_url without explicitly referencing credentials. (Source: Google-Cloud-Python documentation) However, you can do a workaround, as seen here, which consists of:

signing_credentials = compute_engine.IDTokenCredentials(
    auth_request,
    "",
    service_account_email=credentials.service_account_email
)
signed_url = signed_blob_path.generate_signed_url(
    expires_at_ms,
    credentials=signing_credentials,
    version="v4"
)