403 when using firebase API to create a project (As an owner user, not a service account)

Question

I am trying to create a firebase project using the api. The document for this is here: https://firebase.google.com/docs/projects/api/reference/rest/v1beta1/projects/addFirebase

I have created a GCP project already and I am the owner of this project. I can see my project in a request to: https://firebase.google.com/docs/projects/api/reference/rest/v1beta1/availableProjects/list . It has a project id of: projects/my-project-id-here

I am making the requests as a owner of the GCP project user account (I am not using a service account!) using Google OAuth 2.0 with the correct scopes (You can try it in the documentation), but I am receiving a response of:

{
  "error": {
    "code": 403,
    "message": "The caller does not have permission",
    "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
  }
}

I can create firebase project fine If I go to firebase website directly and create the project there.

Google take 30 days to delete my test projects, so I am restricted to how many times I can try to get this right from scratch. Therefore I am also interested to know how you fully unlink firebase from a GCP project without deleting that project. Removing the service account and disabling the APIs from GCP console doesn't seem to do the trick.

Finally, I do not know if it is relevant but I also have the same user account setup with a developer account on google play and the GCP project is linked up for API access it's created service account granted access. I don't think this is relevant though, as my understanding is that I can setup a firebase project without this.

Hope someone can help!

Unless you are creating the project as part of an organization you cannot use the API to create projects. cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/quickstart-organizations — John Hanley
Hi John, thanks for the comment. However as stated in the question I have already created a GCP project. — Ravendarksky
Hi John, this is not the case. I want to use a GCP project which is already setup and configured for other things. I've got it working on a GCP project with no parent (I have owner role on the project). Basically I'd been manually creating firebase projects, but I'd never clicked into one so had not yet accepted their developer terms and conditions which seem to restrict some API requests (undocumented). — Ravendarksky
You might be correct. I overlooked FIREBASE in your question. — John Hanley

Ravendarksky Ravendarksky · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-20T15:30:35

I've found the solution to this. You cannot use the firebase API to create a firebase project unless you've first accepted the terms and conditions which aren't shown to you until you're in a firebase project (go figure).

Anyway here are some clear steps:

Create a firebase project through the website
Open the firebase project
Accept the terms and conditions for firebase use
Delete the firebase project and enjoy the API now working.

403 when using firebase API to create a project (As an owner user, not a service account)

2 Answers