Looker API : How to properly authenticate in a multi-tenant application

[NicoG07]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently using Looker in a multi-tenant scenario, and, I rely on User Attributes to configure the BigQuery dataset that should be used for a specific client.

While it was working fine when using Embed Dashboards (Using create_sso_embed_url from the JS SDK, allowed us to create an Embed User for each client and assign it the correct User Attributes).

Now, we want to use the Looker API for other use-cases that won't rely on Embed Dashboards, and I'm not sure on the correct approach. As the API relies on API Key to authenticate applications as per the documentation I don't know the expected approach. At first, I wanted to dynamically pass User Attributes when creating queries using create_query from the JS SDK, but it seems it's not supported.

The current approach we use tries to create an Embed User with an external ID (create_embed_user from the SDK) and then associate the expected User Attributes and Role.
While it works, it sounds overkills and slows down each API call because we need to create and check the user each time.

Anyone can suggest me a better approach to use the Looker API in my application which should set the expected User Attribute based on my client context?

Thank you in advance !