This page describes how to create and manage Identity and Access Management (IAM) custom roles. Managing roles includes modifying, disabling, listing, deleting, and undeleting roles.
Before you begin
Enable the IAM API.
Roles required to enable APIs
To enable APIs, you need the
serviceusage.services.enablepermission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.Set up authentication.
Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:
Console
When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.
gcloud
In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.
At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
C#
To use the .NET samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Set up ADC for a local development environment in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
C++
To use the C++ samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Set up ADC for a local development environment in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
Go
To use the Go samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Set up ADC for a local development environment in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
Java
To use the Java samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Set up ADC for a local development environment in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
Python
To use the Python samples on this page in a local development environment, install and initialize the gcloud CLI, and then set up Application Default Credentials with your user credentials.
-
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
-
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
-
If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:
gcloud auth application-default login
You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.
If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Set up ADC for a local development environment in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
REST
To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.
Install the Google Cloud CLI.
If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.
For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.
-
Understand the Google Cloud resource hierarchy.
Required roles
To get the permissions that you need to create and manage custom roles, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles:
-
To manage roles for a project:
Role Administrator (
roles/iam.roleAdmin) on the project that you want to manage roles for -
To manage roles for an organization:
Organization Role Administrator (
roles/iam.organizationRoleAdmin) on the organization that you want to manage roles for
For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.
View available permissions for projects, folders, and organizations
You can create custom roles for an entire organization, or for a specific project in that organization. The permissions that are available for custom roles depend on where you create the role. For example, if a permission can only be used at the organization level, then you can't include that permission in a project-level custom role.
To check which permissions are available for organization-level and project-level custom roles, you can use the gcloud CLI or the Identity and Access Management API to list the permissions that are available in a specific organization or project. For example, you can get all permissions that are available for custom roles that are created in your project.
Some permissions might not be visible to you or usable in a custom role, even if they are supported in custom roles. For example, a permission might not be available for use in custom roles if you have not enabled the API for the service.
To learn more about the permissions that you can add to custom roles, see Supported permissions.
gcloud
-
In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.
At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
-
Use the
gcloud iam list-testable-permissionscommand to get a list of permissions that are available for custom roles in a specific project or organization. The response lists the permissions that you can use in custom roles for that project or organization.To list permissions that are available in custom roles for a project or organization, run this command:
gcloud iam list-testable-permissions FULL_RESOURCE_NAME \ --filter="customRolesSupportLevel!=NOT_SUPPORTED"Replace
FULL_RESOURCE_NAMEwith one of the following values:-
Project:
//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/PROJECT_ID(for example,//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/my-project) -
Organization:
//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/organizations/NUMERIC_ID(for example,//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/organizations/123456789012)
The results indicate whether each permission is supported in custom roles. Permissions that do not have a
customRolesSupportLevelfield are fully supported.The
list-testable-permissionscommand might return hundreds of results. This partial example shows the format of each result:--- name: appengine.applications.create stage: GA --- customRolesSupportLevel: TESTING name: appengine.applications.disable stage: GA --- name: appengine.applications.get stage: GA --- name: appengine.applications.update stage: GA --- name: appengine.instances.delete stage: GA --- name: appengine.instances.get stage: GA ---
-
C++
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C++ API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
C#
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C# API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Go
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Go API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Java
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Java API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Python
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Python API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
REST
The
permissions.queryTestablePermissions
method lists permissions available in an organization or project.
Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:
FULL_RESOURCE_NAME: A URI consisting of the service name and the path to the resource. For examples, see Full resource names.PAGE_SIZE: Optional. The number of permissions to include in the response. The default value is 100, and the maximum value is 1,000. If the number of permissions is greater than the page size, the response contains a pagination token that you can use to retrieve the next page of results.NEXT_PAGE_TOKEN: Optional. The pagination token returned in an earlier response from this method. If specified, the list of testable permissions will start where the previous response ended.
HTTP method and URL:
POST https://iam.googleapis.com/v1/permissions:queryTestablePermissions
Request JSON body:
{
"fullResourceName": "FULL_RESOURCE_NAME"
"pageSize": PAGE_SIZE,
"pageToken": "NEXT_PAGE_TOKEN"
}
To send your request, expand one of these options:
The response contains the list of permissions.
{
"permissions": [
{
"name": "iam.serviceAccountKeys.create",
"stage": "GA"
},
{
"name": "iam.serviceAccountKeys.delete",
"stage": "GA"
},
{
"name": "iam.serviceAccountKeys.get",
"stage": "GA"
}
],
"nextPageToken": "CgoHBajEfjUDQyABEPaIv5vIiMDTVhgDIhtpYW0uc2VydmljZUFjY291bnRLZXlzLmxpc3Q"
}
Get the role metadata
Before you create a custom role, you might want to get the metadata for both predefined and custom roles. Role metadata includes the role ID and permissions contained in the role. You can view the metadata using the Google Cloud console or the IAM API.
To view the role metadata, use one of the methods below:
Console
In the Google Cloud console go to the Roles page.
Select your organization or project from the drop-down list at the top of the page.
Click the tab for the type of role that you want to view metadata for:
- To view metadata for predefined roles, stay on the Predefined tab.
- To view metadata for custom roles, click the Custom tab.
To view the role permissions, select the checkbox for the roles whose permissions you want to view, then click Details. The panel displays the permissions contained in the roles.
If you want to find all the roles that include a specific permission, type the permission name in the Filter box at the top of the list of roles.
gcloud
-
In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.
At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
-
Use the
gcloud iam roles describecommand to view metadata for predefined roles and custom roles.To view the metadata for a predefined role, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles describe ROLE_ID
ROLE_IDis the ID of the role. Predefined roles include theroleprefix in their IDs, for example,roles/iam.roleViewer.The following example demonstrates the output of the
describecommand when executed on the predefined roleroles/iam.roleViewer:gcloud iam roles describe roles/iam.roleViewerdescription: Read access to all custom roles in the project. etag: AA== includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list - resourcemanager.projects.get - resourcemanager.projects.getIamPolicy name: roles/iam.roleViewer stage: GA title: Role Viewer
To view the metadata for a custom role, execute one of the following commands:
-
To view the metadata for a custom role created at the organization level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles describe --organization=ORGANIZATION_ID ROLE_ID
-
To view the metadata for a custom role created at the project level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles describe --project=PROJECT_ID ROLE_ID
Each placeholder value is described below:
-
ORGANIZATION_IDis the numeric ID of the organization, such as123456789012. -
PROJECT_IDis the name of the project, such asmy-project. -
ROLE_IDis the ID of the role, excluding any prefixes likeprojects/,organizations/, orroles/. For example,myCompanyAdmin.
For more information, see the reference documentation for
gcloud iam roles describe. -
C++
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C++ API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
C#
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C# API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Go
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Go API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Java
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Java API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Python
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Python API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
REST
The
roles.get
method gets the definition of a role.
Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:
ROLE_NAME: The full role name, including anyorganizations/,projects/, orroles/prefixes. For example,organizations/123456789012/roles/myCompanyAdmin.
HTTP method and URL:
GET https://iam.googleapis.com/v1/ROLE_NAME
To send your request, expand one of these options:
The response contains the role definition.
{
"name": "projects/my-project/roles/customRole",
"title": "My Custom Role",
"description": "My custom role description.",
"includedPermissions": [
"storage.buckets.get",
"storage.buckets.list"
],
"etag": "BwWiPg2fmDE="
}
Create a custom role
You can create a custom role at the project or organization level.
An organization-level custom role can include any of the IAM
permissions that are supported in custom
roles. A project-level custom role can
contain any supported permission except for permissions that can only be used
at the organization or folder level, such as
resourcemanager.organizations.get. If you try to add these permissions to a
project-level custom role, you see an error message:
Console
The following warning message is displayed: "Not applicable for project-level custom roles". The permission will be automatically unselected from the list of included permissions, and you can proceed with creating the role.
gcloud
The following error message
is returned: INVALID_ARGUMENT: Permission PERMISSION is not
valid. The custom role will not be created until you first remove the
permission from the role definition and try
the operation again.
REST API
The following error message is returned:
Permission PERMISSION is not valid, along with an
HTTP 400 error code and a status of INVALID_ARGUMENT. The custom role will
not be created until you first remove the permission from the role
definition and try the operation again.
Each custom role can contain up to 3,000
permissions. Also, the maximum total size of the title, description, and
permission names for a custom role is 64 KB. If you
need to create a larger custom role, you can split the permissions across
multiple custom roles. Choose role titles that show the relationship between the
custom roles, such as Custom Admin (1 of 2) and Custom Admin (2 of 2).
Each custom role can have a launch stage. Most launch stages are informational,
and help you keep track of whether each role is ready for widespread use.
Additionally, the DISABLED launch stage lets you disable a custom
role. For more information about launch stages, see
Testing and deploying.
Console
Some predefined roles contain deprecated permissions or permissions that are otherwise not permitted in custom roles. If you try to create a custom role based on one of these predefined roles, the custom role will omit the deprecated and restricted permissions.
To create a new custom role from scratch, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Roles page.
Using the drop-down list at the top of the page, select the organization or project in which you want to create a role.
Click Create custom role.
Enter a Title, Description, ID, and Role launch stage for the role. The role ID cannot be changed after the role is created.
Click Add Permissions.
Select the permissions you want to include in the role and click Add Permissions. Use the All Services and All Types drop-down lists to filter and select permissions by services and types.
To create a custom role based on an existing predefined role, do the following:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Roles page.
Select the organization or project in which you want to create a role.
Select the checkbox for the roles that you want to base the new custom role on.
Click Create custom role from selection.
Enter a Title, Description, ID, and Role launch stage for the role. The role ID cannot be changed after the role is created.
Uncheck the permissions you want to exclude from the role.
Click Add Permissions to include any permissions.
Click Create.
gcloud
-
In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.
At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
-
Use the
gcloud iam roles createcommand to create new custom roles. You can use this command in two ways:-
By providing a YAML file that contains the role definition
-
By using flags to specify the role definition
When creating a custom role, you must specify whether it applies to the organization level or project level by using the
--organization=ORGANIZATION_IDor--project=PROJECT_IDflags. Each example below creates a custom role at the project level.A custom role can contain only permissions that are supported in custom roles. If the custom role contains other permissions, the command fails.
To create a custom role using a YAML file:
Create a YAML file that contains the definition for your custom role. The file must be structured in the following way:
title: ROLE_TITLE description: ROLE_DESCRIPTION stage: LAUNCH_STAGE includedPermissions: - PERMISSION_1 - PERMISSION_2
Each placeholder value is described below:
-
ROLE_TITLEis a friendly title for the role, such as"My Company Admin". -
ROLE_DESCRIPTIONis a short description of the role, such as"My custom role description". -
LAUNCH_STAGEindicates the stage of a role in the launch lifecycle, such asALPHA,BETA, orGA. -
PERMISSION_1andPERMISSION_2are permissions to include in the custom role, such asiam.roles.get. You can't use wildcard characters (*) in permission names.
Save the YAML file, and then execute one of the following commands:
-
To create a custom role at the organization level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles create ROLE_ID--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID \ --file=YAML_FILE_PATH -
To create a custom role at the project level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles create ROLE_ID --project=PROJECT_ID \ --file=YAML_FILE_PATH
Each placeholder value is described below:
-
ROLE_IDis the name of the role, such asmyCompanyAdmin. -
ORGANIZATION_IDis the numeric ID of the organization, such as123456789012. -
PROJECT_IDis the name of the project, such asmy-project. -
YAML_FILE_PATHis the path to the location of your YAML file that contains the custom role definition.
Examples
The following example YAML file demonstrates how to create a role definition:
title: "My Company Admin" description: "My custom role description." stage: "ALPHA" includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list
The following example demonstrates how to create a role at the organization level using the YAML file:
gcloud iam roles create myCompanyAdmin --organization=123456789012 \ --file=my-role-definition.yamlIf the role was created successfully, the command's output is similar to the following:
Created role [myCompanyAdmin]. description: My custom role description. etag: BwVkBX0sQD0= includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list name: organizations/123456789012/roles/myCompanyAdmin stage: ALPHA title: My Company Admin
The following example demonstrates how to create a role at the project level using the YAML file:
gcloud iam roles create myCompanyAdmin --project=my-project \ --file=my-role-definition.yamlIf the role was created successfully, the command's output is similar to the following:
Created role [myCompanyAdmin]. description: My custom role description. etag: BwVkBX0sQD0= includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list name: projects/my-project/roles/myCompanyAdmin stage: ALPHA title: My Company Admin
To create a custom role using flags:
Execute one of the following commands:
-
To create a custom role at the organization level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles create ROLE_ID--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID \ --title=ROLE_TITLE --description=ROLE_DESCRIPTION \ --permissions="PERMISSIONS_LIST" --stage=LAUNCH_STAGE -
To create a custom role at the project level, execute the following command:
gcloud iam roles create ROLE_ID --project=PROJECT_ID \ --title=ROLE_TITLE --description=ROLE_DESCRIPTION \ --permissions="PERMISSIONS_LIST" --stage=LAUNCH_STAGE
Each placeholder value is described below:
-
ROLE_IDis the name of the role, such asmyCompanyAdmin. -
ORGANIZATION_IDis the numeric ID of the organization, such as123456789012. -
PROJECT_IDis the name of the project, such asmy-project. -
ROLE_TITLEis a friendly title for the role, such as"My Company Admin". -
ROLE_DESCRIPTIONis a short description of the role, such as"My custom role description.". -
PERMISSIONS_LISTcontains a comma-separated list of permissions you want to include in the custom role. For example:iam.roles.get,iam.roles.list. You can't use wildcard characters (*) in permission names. -
LAUNCH_STAGEindicates the stage of a role in the launch lifecycle, such asALPHA,BETA, orGA.
Examples
The following example demonstrates how to create a role at the organization level using flags:
gcloud iam roles create myCompanyAdmin --organization=123456789012 \ --title="My Company Admin" --description="My custom role description." \ --permissions="iam.roles.get,iam.roles.list" --stage=ALPHAIf the role was created successfully, the command's output is similar to the following:
Created role [myCompanyAdmin]. description: My custom role description. etag: BwVkBX0sQD0= includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list name: organizations/123456789012/roles/myCompanyAdmin stage: ALPHA title: My Company Admin
The following example demonstrates how to create a role at the project level using flags:
gcloud iam roles create myCompanyAdmin --project=my-project \ --title="My Company Admin" --description="My custom role description." \ --permissions="iam.roles.get,iam.roles.list" --stage=ALPHAIf the role was created successfully, the command's output is similar to the following:
Created role [myCompanyAdmin]. description: My custom role description. etag: BwVkBX0sQD0= includedPermissions: - iam.roles.get - iam.roles.list name: projects/my-project/roles/myCompanyAdmin stage: ALPHA title: My Company Admin
-
C++
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C++ API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
C#
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM C# API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Go
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Go API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Java
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Java API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
Python
To learn how to install and use the client library for IAM, see IAM client libraries. For more information, see the IAM Python API reference documentation.
To authenticate to IAM, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Before you begin.
REST
The
roles.create
method creates a custom role in a project or organization.
Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:
RESOURCE_TYPE: The resource type whose custom roles you want to manage. Use the valueprojectsororganizations.RESOURCE_ID: The project ID or organization ID whose custom roles you want to manage. Project IDs are alphanumeric strings, likemy-project. Organization IDs are numeric, like123456789012.ROLE_ID: The name of the role, such asmyCompanyAdmin.ROLE_TITLE: The human-readable title for the role. For example,My Company Admin.ROLE_DESCRIPTION: A description for the role. For example,"The company admin role allows company admins to access important resources".-
PERMISSION_1andPERMISSION_2: The permissions that you want to include in the role. For example,storage.objects.update. You can't use wildcard characters (*) in permission names.A custom role can contain only permissions that are supported in custom roles. If the custom role contains other permissions, the request fails.
LAUNCH_STAGE: The current launch stage of the role. This field can contain one of the following values:EAP,ALPHA,BETA,GA,DEPRECATED, orDISABLED.
HTTP method and URL:
POST https://iam.googleapis.com/v1/RESOURCE_TYPE/RESOURCE_ID/roles
Request JSON body:
{
"roleId": "ROLE_ID",
"role": {
"title": "ROLE_TITLE",
"description": "ROLE_DESCRIPTION",
"includedPermissions": [
"PERMISSION_1",
"PERMISSION_2"
],
"stage": "LAUNCH_STAGE"
}
}
To send your request, expand one of these options:
The response contains the role you created.
{
"name": "projects/myProject/roles/myCompanyAdmin",
"title": "My Company Admin",
"description": "My custom role description.",
"includedPermissions": [
"iam.roles.get",
"iam.roles.list"
],
"etag": "BwWox/JbaZw="
}
Edit an existing custom role
A common pattern for updating a resource's metadata, such as a custom role, is the read-modify-write pattern. With this pattern, you read the role's current state, update the data locally, and then send the modified data for writing.
The read-modify-write pattern can cause a conflict if two or more independent
processes attempt the sequence simultaneously. For example, if two owners for a
project try to make conflicting changes to a role at the same time, some changes
could fail. IAM solves this problem using an etag property in
custom roles. This property is used to verify if the custom role has changed
since the last request. When you make a request to IAM with an
etag value, IAM compares the etag value in the request with the
existing etag value associated with the custom role. It writes the change only
if the etag values match.
When you update a role, first get the role using roles.get(), update the role,
and then write the updated role using roles.patch(). Use the etag value when
setting the role only if the corresponding role in roles.get() contains an
etag value.