401 When trying to create an orgunit using Google API

Question

I'm trying to use Google's Admin SDK to create an orgunit using a shell script. My script is as follows:

# Obtain a token we can use to modify the organisation
auth_header=`oauth2l header --json "..." "admin.directory.orgunit"`
customer_id=...

curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST \
    --data-binary "@google-orgunits/technical.json" \
    --header "$auth_header" \
    "https://www.googleapis.com/admin/directory/v1/customer/$customer_id/orgunits"

This produces the output:

*   Trying 216.58.196.138...
* Connected to www.googleapis.com (216.58.196.138) port 443 (#0)
* found 173 certificates in /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
* found 704 certificates in /etc/ssl/certs
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* SSL connection using TLS1.2 / ECDHE_RSA_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
*    server certificate verification OK
*    server certificate status verification SKIPPED
*    common name: *.googleapis.com (matched)
*    server certificate expiration date OK
*    server certificate activation date OK
*    certificate public key: RSA
*    certificate version: #3
*    subject: C=US,ST=California,L=Mountain View,O=Google Inc,CN=*.googleapis.com
*    start date: Wed, 05 Apr 2017 17:01:30 GMT
*    expire date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 16:56:00 GMT
*    issuer: C=US,O=Google Inc,CN=Google Internet Authority G2
*    compression: NULL
* ALPN, server accepted to use http/1.1
> POST /admin/directory/v1/customer/.../orgunits HTTP/1.1
> Host: www.googleapis.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.47.0
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type: application/json
> Authorization: Bearer ...
> Content-Length: 157
> 
* upload completely sent off: 157 out of 157 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
< Vary: X-Origin
< WWW-Authenticate: Bearer realm="https://accounts.google.com/", error=invalid_token
< Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
< Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2017 06:26:27 GMT
< Expires: Sat, 15 Apr 2017 06:26:27 GMT
< Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< Server: GSE
< Alt-Svc: quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="37,36,35"
< Accept-Ranges: none
< Vary: Origin,Accept-Encoding
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
< 
{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "required",
    "message": "Login Required",
    "locationType": "header",
    "location": "Authorization"
   }
  ],
  "code": 401,
  "message": "Login Required"
 }
}

There must be some problem here: I appear to be obtaining a valid token, (looks like ya29.ElouBGKFig-nXZ9uykyGoDr0hxAxG5PMJTUh3VmtAtj2SAdYEbH2Coumjp5XoaF232oVx3--2EpTyNi5NgFBNrLINJij9tGL3-64MshEXjHhvkH-1NESoxPeVAU). I've followed all of the instructions here, enabled API access, authorized my API client, everything; but still, not working. Where have I gone wrong?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 16 '17 at 14:26

Try checking the documentation about Directory API: Authorize Requests

Every request your application sends to the Directory API must include an authorization token. The token also identifies your application to Google.

Here's the OAuth 2.0 scope information for the Directory API:

https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.orgunit - Global scope for access to all organization unit operations.
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.orgunit.readonly - Scope for only retrieving organization units.

You can check the OAuth 2.0 Playground, an interactive demonstration of using OAuth 2.0 with Google (including the option to use your own client credentials). Also there are many quickstart that can help you on how to properly authorize a request for Admin SDK.

Hope this helps.

401 When trying to create an orgunit using Google API

1 Answers1