I am developing a utility where I need to validate the user by taking username and validate it with a specific gitlab private repository members. If the user exists in that repository members then only the executable will run. As this utility will be used by many users,I do not want to use my personal access token.
I am new to Gitlab, would be great help if you can show possible options here.
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Is there a way to call GitLab API apart from using personal "PRIVATE TOKEN"?
Problem with PRIVATE TOKEN is , it need to be updated in settings -> CI/CD -> Environment Variables which is accessible to anyone with maintainer privilege.
And its need to be updated, if the developer moves out of the project .
I found out there is no other way to do it and alternate implementation still in GitLab's backlog.
But just to ensure & looking for if there is any other work around exist.
As of Gitlab 13.9, there's no way to use the API without someone's access token, but you could create a "dummy" Gitlab user and use an access token of theirs if you didn't want to use one belonging to a person.
What I got so far is, it is possible to Authenticate with Personal Access Token and include external CI script but a cleaner approach would be to get access using $CI_JOB_TOKEN since it is more secure and restricted. I am looking into if it can be done this way -
include 'https://gitlab-ci-token:${CI_JOB_TOKEN}#raw-file-url'
I have tried to curl in this format in a dummy script job, but it fails to fetch the file.
Apparently, an external script can be imported using file API and $CI_JOB_TOKEN (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/merge_requests/2346/diffs), but I am looking into if include feature also support this. Any suggestion on how to achieve that is appreciated.
Unfortunately, CI_JOB_TOKEN is very limited in scope. As of today (GitLab 11.0), you can only do two things with it:
Authenticate with the GitLab Container (Docker) Registry
Authenticate to trigger a multi-project pipeline (EE only)
References:
https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/ci/variables/
https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/
So you cannot use CI_JOB_TOKEN to download a file from another repository, neither via the raw endpoint (/raw/<ref>/<path>) nor the API.
Unfortunately, deploy keys don't help either -- they are only for SSH.
The only workable solution I've come up with is to use a separate user:
Create a new user with Reporter role.
Create a personal access token (/profile/personal_access_tokens) for that user with api and read_repository rights.
Add this token as a secret variable in the project CI/CD settings. Call it e.g. BUILD_USER_TOKEN.
Use $BUILD_USER_TOKEN in your CI script to access the API or project files.
This is a huge hack, and I really hope to see GitLab make CI_JOB_TOKEN a first-class, read-only (?) token with rights to specified resources.
Still there is no support for the CI_JOB_TOKEN to have a useful API access. But they are working on it https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/3559
Given I have a existing project and I want to add an external GitLab user to the project.
The user can enter his/her GitLab username (and additional fields if needed) in a UI.
What is the best practice to verify that the user is valid and that the user is the real owner of the entered account over the GitLab API?
This should also support external login methods (GitHub, ...).
I'm trying to get to the admin area so I can set the time-to-live for the gitlab container registry token. However, I don't see where that's available to me. I am the sole owner and creator of the project after I signed up for a Gitlab account and clicked to create a new project. My problem is similar to this person:
https://forum.gitlab.com/t/where-is-the-admin-area/5936
except I'm not using Gitlab CE.
So how can I become an admin for my own project so I can change some admin settings?
You can't have access to the admin area of gitlab.com. It is a private instance of Gitlab Enterprise Edition, belonging to Gitlab. They do allow anyone to have unlimited access (any number of public or private repositories as well as groups etc) but you can't be an admin.
Being an admin would mean you could see anyone's projects or delete them etc. That's not reasonable...
I have a project with a Node dependency on a private Git repository. I need to be able to run npm install without being prompted to enter a password or allow an SSH connection, so I'm using an access token that I created on GitHub in my package.json:
"dependencies": {
"sass-theme": "git+https://[token]:x-oauth-basic#github.com/MyOrg/sass-theme.git#v1.0.2",
"node-sass": "^4.5.0"
}
This project is shared with dozens of other people, so obviously I don't want to keep my token in source control. I know I can create a read-only deployment key on GitHub, but I believe that would require other developers to import the SSH key to build the project locally.
Is it possible to create an access token that can be shared but that has read-only access to clone the repository?
The most straightforward way I can think of to create a token that provides read-only access to a private repo is to:
Have a user who has read-only access to the given private repo
(and ideally, not much else)
As that user create a Personal Access Token with the "repo" scope
It would be best if they didn't have access to other orgs/repos, since the "repo" scope grants the user total control over any repos that user has write access to.
I know in an Enterprise solution we would do that with a System ID, but on GitHub you can instead create a Machine User.
Deploy keys are the way to go. By default they don't allow write access and they are scoped to the specific repository (unlike the GitHub personal access token). So you can now generate a private/public key pair, set one as read/pull only deploy key on a single repository in GitHub and use the private key in your CI.
For instance run a bash script:
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)";
ssh-add <your private deploy key>;
Now your CI has rights to access private repo's during the build.
You can add a Deploy key by going to your repository on Github and then clicking Settings > Deploy keys > Add deploy key
If you think it's a bad idea to put your credentials in your source code (as you should!) then you have few options:
Keep it hosted in a private GitHub repo but add those dozens of other people as collaborators to this repo (with read only access).
Keep it hosted in a private GitHub repo but owned as an organization and add those people to the organization.
Publish it as a private npm module.
Publish it in a private npm registry.
Include the dependency in the source code of the program that needs it.
The last one is basically like including the node_modules in the original code that uses that module so of course it's not pretty. Hosting your own npm registry is not trivial but you can automate adding users that way. Publishing private npm module is not free. Maintaining an organization full of people who should be able to access your repo is annoying.
Keep in mind one thing: if you share your credentials with more than one person, expect everyone to eventually have access to it, it's just a matter of time. The credentials could have a limited scope, it can be a read only deploy key or a machine user with restricted access, but if it is distributed it will leak eventually as it always does, especially when you share it with dozens of people. It's much better to keep a list of people who can access the code, and you can automate keeping that list up to date using the GitHub API.
I would never recommend distributing credentials in the source code of the project, no matter how limited access those credentials provide.
It's ugly that there are no scope for Read-only access to private repo.
What I suggest is to create a new token even with read/write as a Temporary token. Then pull/fetch the changes and delete the Token directly.
Apparently, GitHub has heard you and added a new beta feature called "Fine-Grained Tokens"!
https://github.blog/2022-10-18-introducing-fine-grained-personal-access-tokens-for-github/
"Create a fine-grained, repository-scoped token suitable for personal API use and for using Git over HTTPS"
Go to setting/developer settings/Personal Access Tokens/Fine grained token