Managing memberships for Google Groups

After a group exists, you can create memberships for it. This page explains how to perform some fundamental membership operations with the Cloud Identity Groups API. To learn how to create a Google Group, refer to Creating and searching for Google Groups .

Before you begin

Enable the Cloud Identity API.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role ( roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin ), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles .

Enable the API
Set up authentication and install the client libraries. See Setting up the Cloud Identity Groups API to learn how.

Add a membership to a Google Group

REST

Use the memberships.create method to add a member to a group.

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

GROUP_ID : The numeric ID of the group that you want to add a member to. To find the ID of a single group, use the groups.lookup method. To see all group IDs under a customer or namespace, use the groups.list method.
MEMBER_ID : The ID of the member. For Google-managed entities, use the member's email address. For external-identity-mapped entities, use a string that meets the identity source's requirements.
ROLE_NAME : The name of the role that you want to grant to the member. Use OWNER , MANAGER , or MEMBER .
PROJECT_ID : The alphanumeric ID of the Google Cloud project that you want to use to make the request.

HTTP method and URL:

POST https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships

Request JSON body:

{
  "preferredMemberKey": {
    "id": " MEMBER_ID 
"
  },
  "roles": [
    {
      "name": "MEMBER"
    }
  ]
}

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login , or by using Cloud Shell , which automatically logs you into the gcloud CLI . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list .

Save the request body in a file named request.json , and execute the following command:

curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
-H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID 
" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d @request.json \
"https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships"

PowerShell (Windows)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list .

Save the request body in a file named request.json , and execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = " PROJECT_ID 
" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
-Method POST `
-Headers $headers `
-ContentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8" `
-InFile request.json `
-Uri "https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships" | Select-Object -Expand Content

APIs Explorer (browser)

Copy the request body and open the method reference page . The APIs Explorer panel opens on the right side of the page. You can interact with this tool to send requests. Paste the request body in this tool, complete any other required fields, and click Execute .

The response contains an Operation indicting the status of your request.

Finished operations contain the membership that was added. For example:

{
  "done": true,
  "response": {
    "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.apps.cloudidentity.groups.v1.Membership",
    "name": "groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships/123456789012345678901",
    "preferredMemberKey": {
      "id": " MEMBER_ID 
"
    },
    "roles": [
      {
        "name": "MEMBER"
      }
    ]
  }
}

You can also use the memberships.create method to add a member as a manager or owner of the group:

To make someone a manager of the group, follow the procedure to add a member to the group, but use the following request body:

 { 
  
 "preferredMemberKey" 
 : 
  
 { 
  
 "id" 
 : 
  
 " MEMBER_ID 
" 
  
 }, 
  
 "roles" 
 : 
  
 [ 
  
 { 
  
 "name" 
 : 
  
 "MEMBER" 
  
 } 
  
 { 
  
 "name" 
 : 
  
 "MANAGER" 
  
 } 
  
 ] 
 }

To make someone an owner of the group, follow the procedure to add a member to the group, but use the following request body:

 { 
  
 "preferredMemberKey" 
 : 
  
 { 
  
 "id" 
 : 
  
 " MEMBER_ID 
" 
  
 }, 
  
 "roles" 
 : 
  
 [ 
  
 { 
  
 "name" 
 : 
  
 "MEMBER" 
  
 } 
  
 { 
  
 "name" 
 : 
  
 "OWNER" 
  
 } 
  
 ] 
 }

def create_google_group_membership ( service , identity_source_id , group_id , member_key ): param = "&groupKey.id=" + group_id + "&groupKey.namespace=identitysources/" + identity_source_id try : lookupGroupNameRequest = service . groups () . lookup () lookupGroupNameRequest . uri += param # Given a group ID and namespace, retrieve the ID for parent group lookupGroupNameResponse = lookupGroupNameRequest . execute () groupName = lookupGroupNameResponse . get ( "name" ) # Create a membership object with a memberKey and a single role of type MEMBER membership = { "preferredMemberKey" : { "id" : member_key }, "roles" : { "name" : "MEMBER" , "expiryDetail" : { "expireTime" : "2021-10-02T15:01:23Z" } } } # Create a membership using the ID for the parent group and a membership object response = service . groups () . memberships () . create ( parent = groupName , body = membership ) . execute () print ( response ) except Exception as e : print ( e )

List memberships of a Google Group

REST

Use the memberships.list method to list the members of a group.

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

GROUP_ID : The numeric ID of the group that you want to list members for. To find the ID of a single group, use the groups.lookup method. To see all group IDs under a customer or namespace, use the groups.list method.
PROJECT_ID : The alphanumeric ID of the Google Cloud project that you want to use to make the request.

HTTP method and URL:

GET https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Execute the following command:

curl -X GET \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
-H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID 
" \
"https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships"

PowerShell (Windows)

Execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = " PROJECT_ID 
" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
-Method GET `
-Headers $headers `
-Uri "https://cloudidentity.googleapis.com/v1/groups/ GROUP_ID 
/memberships" | Select-Object -Expand Content

APIs Explorer (browser)

Open the method reference page . The APIs Explorer panel opens on the right side of the page. You can interact with this tool to send requests. Complete any required fields and click Execute .

The response contains an array of all members in the group and their roles.

Python

The following code lists the memberships for a group:

  def 
  
 list_google_group_memberships 
 ( 
 service 
 , 
 group_id 
 ): 
 param 
 = 
 "&groupKey.id=" 
 + 
 group_id 
 try 
 : 
 lookup_group_name_request 
 = 
 service 
 . 
 groups 
 () 
 . 
 lookup 
 () 
 lookup_group_name_request 
 . 
 uri 
 += 
 param 
 lookup_group_name_response 
 = 
 lookup_group_name_request 
 . 
 execute 
 () 
 group_name 
 = 
 lookup_group_name_response 
 . 
 get 
 ( 
 "name" 
 ) 
 # List memberships 
 response 
 = 
 service 
 . 
 groups 
 () 
 . 
 memberships 
 () 
 . 
 list 
 ( 
 parent 
 = 
 group_name 
 ) 
 . 
 execute 
 () 
 print 
 ( 
 response 
 ) 
 except 
 Exception 
 as 
 e 
 : 
 print 
 ( 
 e 
 )

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies . Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2026-06-11 UTC.