Authenticate with a backend server

If you use Google Sign-In with an app or site that communicates with a backend server, you might need to identify the currently signed-in user on the server. To do so securely, after a user successfully signs in, send the user's ID token to your server using HTTPS. Then, on the server, verify the integrity of the ID token and use the user information contained in the token to establish a session or create a new account.

Warning: Do not accept plain user IDs, such as those you can get with the GoogleUser.getId() method, on your backend server. A modified client application can send arbitrary user IDs to your server to impersonate users, so you must instead use verifiable ID tokens to securely get the user IDs of signed-in users on the server side.

Send the ID token to your server

After a user successfully signs in, get the user's ID token:

function onSignIn(googleUser) {
  var id_token = googleUser.getAuthResponse().id_token;
  ...
}

Then, send the ID token to your server with an HTTPS POST request:

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('POST', 'https://yourbackend.example.com/tokensignin');
xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
xhr.onload = function() {
  console.log('Signed in as: ' + xhr.responseText);
};
xhr.send('idtoken=' + id_token);

Verify the integrity of the ID token

After you receive the ID token by HTTPS POST, you must verify the integrity of the token. To verify that the token is valid, ensure that the following criteria are satisfied:

• The ID token is properly signed by Google. Use Google's public keys (available in JWK or PEM format) to verify the token's signature. These keys are regularly rotated; examine the Cache-Control header in the response to determine when you should retrieve them again.
• The value of aud in the ID token is equal to one of your app's client IDs. This check is necessary to prevent ID tokens issued to a malicious app being used to access data about the same user on your app's backend server.
• The value of iss in the ID token is equal to accounts.google.com or https://accounts.google.com.
• The expiry time (exp) of the ID token has not passed.
• If you want to restrict access to only members of your G Suite domain, verify that the ID token has an hd claim that matches your G Suite domain name.

Rather than writing your own code to perform these verification steps, we strongly recommend using a Google API client library for your platform, or a general-purpose JWT library. For development and debugging, you can call our tokeninfo validation endpoint.

Using a Google API Client Library

Using one of the Google API Client Libraries (e.g. Java, Node.js, PHP, Python) is the recommended way to validate Google ID tokens in a production environment.

Java

To validate an ID token in Java, use the GoogleIdTokenVerifier object. For example:

import com.google.api.client.googleapis.auth.oauth2.GoogleIdToken;
import com.google.api.client.googleapis.auth.oauth2.GoogleIdToken.Payload;
import com.google.api.client.googleapis.auth.oauth2.GoogleIdTokenVerifier;

...

GoogleIdTokenVerifier verifier = new GoogleIdTokenVerifier.Builder(transport, jsonFactory)
    // Specify the CLIENT_ID of the app that accesses the backend:
    .setAudience(Collections.singletonList(CLIENT_ID))
    // Or, if multiple clients access the backend:
    //.setAudience(Arrays.asList(CLIENT_ID_1, CLIENT_ID_2, CLIENT_ID_3))
    .build();

// (Receive idTokenString by HTTPS POST)

GoogleIdToken idToken = verifier.verify(idTokenString);
if (idToken != null) {
  Payload payload = idToken.getPayload();

  // Print user identifier
  String userId = payload.getSubject();
  System.out.println("User ID: " + userId);

  // Get profile information from payload
  String email = payload.getEmail();
  boolean emailVerified = Boolean.valueOf(payload.getEmailVerified());
  String name = (String) payload.get("name");
  String pictureUrl = (String) payload.get("picture");
  String locale = (String) payload.get("locale");
  String familyName = (String) payload.get("family_name");
  String givenName = (String) payload.get("given_name");

  // Use or store profile information
  // ...

} else {
  System.out.println("Invalid ID token.");
}

The GoogleIdTokenVerifier.verify() method verifies the JWT signature, the aud claim, the iss claim, and the exp claim.

If you want to restrict access to only members of your G Suite domain, also verify the hd claim by checking the domain name returned by the Payload.getHostedDomain() method.

Node.js

To validate an ID token in Node.js, use the Google Auth Library for Node.js. Install the library:

npm install google-auth-library --save

Then, call the verifyIdToken() function. For example:

const {OAuth2Client} = require('google-auth-library');
const client = new OAuth2Client(CLIENT_ID);
async function verify() {
  const ticket = await client.verifyIdToken({
      idToken: token,
      audience: CLIENT_ID,  // Specify the CLIENT_ID of the app that accesses the backend
      // Or, if multiple clients access the backend:
      //[CLIENT_ID_1, CLIENT_ID_2, CLIENT_ID_3]
  });
  const payload = ticket.getPayload();
  const userid = payload['sub'];
  // If request specified a G Suite domain:
  //const domain = payload['hd'];
}
verify().catch(console.error);

The verifyIdToken function verifies the JWT signature, the aud claim, the exp claim, and the iss claim.

If you want to restrict access to only members of your G Suite domain, also verify the hd claim matches your G Suite domain name.

PHP

To validate an ID token in PHP, use the Google API Client Library for PHP. Install the library (for example, using Composer):

composer require google/apiclient

Then, call the verifyIdToken() function. For example:

require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Get $id_token via HTTPS POST.

$client = new Google_Client(['client_id' => $CLIENT_ID]);  // Specify the CLIENT_ID of the app that accesses the backend
$payload = $client->verifyIdToken($id_token);
if ($payload) {
  $userid = $payload['sub'];
  // If request specified a G Suite domain:
  //$domain = $payload['hd'];
} else {
  // Invalid ID token
}

The verifyIdToken function verifies the JWT signature, the aud claim, the exp claim, and the iss claim.

If you want to restrict access to only members of your G Suite domain, also verify the hd claim matches your G Suite domain name.

Python

To validate an ID token in Python, use the verify_oauth2_token function. For example:

from google.oauth2 import id_token
from google.auth.transport import requests

# (Receive token by HTTPS POST)
# ...

try:
    # Specify the CLIENT_ID of the app that accesses the backend:
    idinfo = id_token.verify_oauth2_token(token, requests.Request(), CLIENT_ID)

    # Or, if multiple clients access the backend server:
    # idinfo = id_token.verify_oauth2_token(token, requests.Request())
    # if idinfo['aud'] not in [CLIENT_ID_1, CLIENT_ID_2, CLIENT_ID_3]:
    #     raise ValueError('Could not verify audience.')

    if idinfo['iss'] not in ['accounts.google.com', 'https://accounts.google.com']:
        raise ValueError('Wrong issuer.')

    # If auth request is from a G Suite domain:
    # if idinfo['hd'] != GSUITE_DOMAIN_NAME:
    #     raise ValueError('Wrong hosted domain.')

    # ID token is valid. Get the user's Google Account ID from the decoded token.
    userid = idinfo['sub']
except ValueError:
    # Invalid token
    pass

The verify_oauth2_token function verifies the JWT signature, the aud claim, and the exp claim. You must also verify the iss claim and the hd claim (if applicable) by examining the object that verify_oauth2_token returns. If multiple clients access the backend server, also manually verify the aud claim.

Calling the tokeninfo endpoint

An easy way to validate an ID token for debugging is to use the tokeninfo endpoint. Calling this endpoint involves an additional network request that does most of the validation for you, but introduces some latency and the potential for network errors.

To validate an ID token using the tokeninfo endpoint, make an HTTPS POST or GET request to the endpoint, and pass your ID token in the id_token parameter. For example, to validate the token "XYZ123", make the following GET request:

https://oauth2.googleapis.com/tokeninfo?id_token=XYZ123

If the token is properly signed and the iss and exp claims have the expected values, you will get a HTTP 200 response, where the body contains the JSON-formatted ID token claims. Here's an example response:

{
 // These six fields are included in all Google ID Tokens.
 "iss": "https://accounts.google.com",
 "sub": "110169484474386276334",
 "azp": "1008719970978-hb24n2dstb40o45d4feuo2ukqmcc6381.apps.googleusercontent.com",
 "aud": "1008719970978-hb24n2dstb40o45d4feuo2ukqmcc6381.apps.googleusercontent.com",
 "iat": "1433978353",
 "exp": "1433981953",

 // These seven fields are only included when the user has granted the "profile" and
 // "email" OAuth scopes to the application.
 "email": "[e-mail]",
 "email_verified": "true",
 "name" : "Test User",
 "picture": "https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-kYgzyAWpZzJ/ABCDEFGHI/AAAJKLMNOP/tIXL9Ir44LE/s99-c/photo.jpg",
 "given_name": "Test",
 "family_name": "User",
 "locale": "en"
}

Warning: Once you get these claims, you still need to check that the aud claim contains one of your app's client IDs. If it does, then the token is both valid and intended for your client, and you can safely retrieve and use the user's unique Google ID from the sub claim.

If you are a G Suite customer, you might also be interested in the hd claim, which indicates the hosted domain of the user. This can be used to restrict access to a resource to only members of certain domains. The absence of this claim indicates that the user does not belong to a G Suite hosted domain.

Create an account or session

After you have verified the token, check if the user is already in your user database. If so, establish an authenticated session for the user. If the user isn't yet in your user database, create a new user record from the information in the ID token payload, and establish a session for the user. You can prompt the user for any additional profile information you require when you detect a newly created user in your app.

Securing your users' accounts with Cross Account Protection

When you rely on Google to sign in a user, you'll automatically benefit from all of the security features and infrastructure Google has built to safeguard the user's data. However, in the unlikely event that the user's Google Account gets compromised or there is some other significant security event, your app can also be vulnerable to attack. To better protect your accounts from any major security events, use Cross Account Protection to receive security alerts from Google. When you receive these events, you gain visibility into important changes to the security of the user's Google account and you can then take action on your service to secure your accounts.