Verifying Google Chat request in NodeJS

Google Chat includes a bearer token in the Authorization header of every HTTPS Request to a bot. For example:

POST
Host: yourboturl.com
Authorization: Bearer %JWT%
Content-Type: application/json
User-Agent: Google-Dynamite

Decoded JWT token by jwt.io
Header:

{
  "alg": "RS256",
  "kid": "424189bd9a18927f7ee924f1a100601f1524f441",
  "typ": "JWT"
}

Payload:

{
  "aud": "1234567890",
  "exp": 1629047990,
  "iat": 1629044390,
  "iss": "[e-mail]"
}

All bearer tokens sent with requests from Google chat will have [e-mail] as the issuer, with the audience field specifying the target bot's project number from the Google API Console. For example, if the request is for a bot with the project number 1234567890, then the audience is 1234567890. [Verifying bot authenticity]

1. Extract the KID from the header: 424189bd9a18927f7ee924f1a100601f1524f441
2. Use the KID to find the matching public key in the JWKS (JSON Web Key Set) endpoint https://www.googleapis.com/service_accounts/v1/jwk/[e-mail]
3. Verify JWT token using corresponded public key and passing audience and issuer options.

Complete solution

Dependencies

• jsonwebtoken@8.5.1
• jwks-rsa@2.0.4

import { NextFunction, Request, Response, Router } from 'express';
import jwt from 'jsonwebtoken';
import { JwksClient } from 'jwks-rsa';

const GOOGLE_CHAT_PROJECT_NUMBER = '1234567890';

const jwksClient = new JwksClient({
  jwksUri:
    'https://www.googleapis.com/service_accounts/v1/jwk/[e-mail]',
  cache: true,
});

const router: Router = Router();

router.post('/google-chat/events', verificationRequestMiddleware(), async (req, res) => {
  // process google chat event
});

function verificationRequestMiddleware() {
  return async (request: Request, response: Response, next: NextFunction) => {
    const isVerified = await verifyRequest(request);

    if (!isVerified) {
      throw new UnauthorizedError('Authentication failed');
    }

    return next();
  };
}

async function verifyRequest(request: Request): Promise<boolean> {
  const prefix = 'Bearer ';
  const authHeader = request.header('Authorization') as string;
  const token = authHeader?.startsWith(prefix) ? authHeader.slice(prefix.length) : null;

  if (!token) {
    return false;
  }

  return new Promise<boolean>((resolve, reject) => {
    const getKey = (header, callback) => {
      jwksClient.getSigningKey(header.kid, (err, key) => {
        const signingKey = key.getPublicKey();
        callback(null, signingKey);
      });
    };

    jwt.verify(
      token,
      getKey,
      {
        audience: GOOGLE_CHAT_PROJECT_NUMBER,
        issuer: '[e-mail]'
      },
      (err: any, decoded: any) => {
        if (err) {
          reject(false);
        } else {
          resolve(true);
        }
      }
    );
  });   
}

Comments

[Julien Bras]

Thanks for that 🙏
I was struggling with this developers.google.com/chat/api/gui...
There is no Node example 😅

I have been able to reuse your example for my project!