Google cloude authentification without json - python-3.x

Question

So im using a small programm to get license plates from images. I do that by sending google vision the image and searching the text that i get bex for licens plates that are like a regular expression.
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Sat May 23 19:42:18 2020
#author: Odatas
"""
import io
import os
from google.cloud import vision_v1p3beta1 as vision
import cv2
import re
# Setup google authen client key
os.environ['GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS'] = 'client_key.json'
# Source path content all images
SOURCE_PATH = "F:/Radsteuereintreiber/Bilder Temp/"
def recognize_license_plate(img_path):
# Read image with opencv
img = cv2.imread(img_path)
# Get image size
height, width = img.shape[:2]
# Scale image
img = cv2.resize(img, (800, int((height * 800) / width)))
# Save the image to temp file
cv2.imwrite(SOURCE_PATH + "output.jpg", img)
# Create new img path for google vision
img_path = SOURCE_PATH + "output.jpg"
# Create google vision client
client = vision.ImageAnnotatorClient()
# Read image file
with io.open(img_path, 'rb') as image_file:
content = image_file.read()
image = vision.types.Image(content=content)
# Recognize text
response = client.text_detection(image=image)
texts = response.text_annotations
return texts
path = SOURCE_PATH + 'IMG_20200513_173356.jpg'
plate = recognize_license_plate(path)
for text in plate:
# read description
license_plate = text.description
# change all symbols to whitespace.
license_plate = re.sub('[^a-zA-Z0-9\n\.]', ' ', license_plate)
# see if some text matches pattern
test = re.findall('[A-Z]{1,3}\s[A-Z]{1,2}\s\d{1,4}', str(license_plate))
# stop if you found someting
if test is not None:
break
try:
print(test[0])
except Exception:
print("No plate found")
As you can see i set my envoiremental variable to the client_key.json at the start. When i distribut my programm i dont like to send out my key to every user. So i would like to include the key inside the program directly.
I tried it by using the explicit credential method by google with a json created inside the program like this:
def explicit():
#creat json
credentials={ REMOVED: INSIDE HER WOULD BE ALL THE INFORMATION FROM THE JSON KEY FILE.
}
json_credentials=json.dumps(credentials)
# Explicitly use service account credentials by specifying the private key
# file.
storage_client = storage.Client.from_service_account_json(
json_credentials)
# Make an authenticated API request
buckets = list(storage_client.list_buckets())
print(buckets)
# [END auth_cloud_explicit]
But i get the error.
[Errno 2] No such file or directory: content of my json again removed
So i not sure if i have to switch to an api based call and how do i call the same functionality then? Because i have to upload a picture obvriously i dont even think thats possible through an api call.
So im kinda lost. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

If you want the user to be able to make API calls against your Google Cloud project, then including your service account key, either as a JSON file or inline in your code, is basically equivalent, and either way the user would have access to your key.
This is generally not advised though: even a minimally scoped service account would be able to make requests and potentially incur charges against your account.
An alternative would be to deploy your own API inside your Google Cloud project which wraps the call to the Vision API. This would allow you to protect your service account key, and also to rate limit or even block calls to this API if you need to.
Your script or library would then make calls to this custom API instead of directly to the Vision API.