Callback not defined when accessing Google Sheets using service account

Question

I am trying to access data from a public Google Sheet. The sheet has read-only access to anyone. I am using official Node.js client for this. I was using a service account to authenticate the request, as I am using the same service account for accessing another sheet which can't be made public.

The code was working fine, but as soon as I updated the Node.js client to the latest version, it started giving me strange errors. I have created a minified example for the error and here's the code for this -

/*eslint-disable no-console */
const { promisify } = require('util');
const GoogleAuth = require('google-auth-library');
const { google } = require('googleapis');
const googleAuth = new GoogleAuth();

const sheets = google.sheets('v4');
sheets.spreadsheets.values.getAsync = promisify(sheets.spreadsheets.values.get);

async function authorizeWithServiceAccount(serviceAccountKey, scopes) {
  try {
    let authClient = await authorize(serviceAccountKey, scopes);
    return authClient;
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
    throw err;
  }
}

function authorize(credentials, scopes) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    googleAuth.fromJSON(credentials, (err, client) => {
      if (err) {
        console.error(err);
        reject(err);
        return;
      }
      client.scopes = scopes;
      client.authorize((err, result) => {
        if (err) {
          console.error(err);
          reject(err);
          return;
        }
        console.log(result, true);
        resolve(client);
      });
    });
  });
}

async function getData(auth, spreadsheetId, range) {
  try {
    return sheets.spreadsheets.values.getAsync({
      auth: auth,
      spreadsheetId: spreadsheetId,
      range: range
    });
  } catch (e) {
    console.error(e);
    throw e;
  }
}

const serviceAccountJson = require('../configs/keys/service_account'); //The service account json key
const spreadsheetId = 'SPREADSHEET_ID'; // Id of the sheet I am trying to access
const apiKey = 'THE_API_KEY'; //Any API key generated on Google's API console
const range = 'A:M';

async function init() {
  let authClient = await authorizeWithServiceAccount(serviceAccountJson, [
    'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets.readonly'
  ]);
  return getData(authClient, spreadsheetId, range); //This doesn't work and throw error
  // return getData(apiKey, spreadsheetId, range); //This does work and return all the data.
}

init()
  .then(result => {
    console.log('Received Data');
    console.log(result.data);
  })
  .catch(e => console.error(e));

So if I use API key instead of the service account as auth parameter, I get proper data as expected. But as soon as I use a service account instead, result.data becomes undefined and then I get this error.

TypeError: callback is not a function
    at JWT.OAuth2Client.postRequest (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/google-auth-library/lib/auth/oauth2client.js:341:9)
    at postRequestCb (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/google-auth-library/lib/auth/oauth2client.js:297:23)
    at Request._callback (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/google-auth-library/lib/transporters.js:113:17)
    at Request.self.callback (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/request/request.js:186:22)
    at emitTwo (events.js:126:13)
    at Request.emit (events.js:214:7)
    at Request.<anonymous> (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/request/request.js:1163:10)
    at emitOne (events.js:116:13)
    at Request.emit (events.js:211:7)
    at IncomingMessage.<anonymous> (/Volumes/Projects/Work/node_modules/request/request.js:1085:12)

I was using googleapis library version 25.x before and at that time service account auth was working, but as soon as I updated it to 28.x, it stopped working.

Is there any way I can use service account instead of API key in the 28.x googleapis node.js client? I can't downgrade it since I am using other Google APIs which require the latest version.

Answer 1

OK, I looked again at the documentation and they have mentioned it at one place about how to do it. I was previously using the google-auth library like this -

const GoogleAuth = require('google-auth-library');
const googleAuth = new GoogleAuth();

which was mentioned in the previous documentation. I guess in the sheet API's docs, can't remember. But they are now supporting auth using googleapis package along with sheets API. Thus all I had to do was switch to using the auth. So this is how I am getting authClient now and it's working in the test.

const { google } = require('googleapis');
const authClient = await google.auth.getClient({
    credentials: credentials,
    scopes: scopes
  });

Now, I am getting proper data with the latest googleapis package / Node.js client.

So the problem was how am I getting the authClient. The older way was seemingly not compatible with the latest client.