Unless otherwise configured, the client libraries use Application Default Credentials to authenticate with Google Cloud Services. While this works for most applications, in some cases you may need to override this default. You can do so by providing the UnifiedCredentialsOption The following example shows how to explicitly load a service account key file:
[](std::string const& keyfile) {
auto is = std::ifstream(keyfile);
is.exceptions(std::ios::badbit); // Minimal error handling in examples
auto contents = std::string(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(is.rdbuf()), {});
auto options =
google::cloud::Options{}.set<google::cloud::UnifiedCredentialsOption>(
google::cloud::MakeServiceAccountCredentials(contents));
return google::cloud::config_v1::ConfigClient(
google::cloud::config_v1::MakeConfigConnection(options));
}
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-03-05 UTC."],[[["This page documents how to override the default authentication credentials used by client libraries when interacting with Google Cloud Services."],["The default authentication uses Application Default Credentials, but you can override this by providing the UnifiedCredentialsOption."],["An example demonstrates explicitly loading a service account key file using `google::cloud::UnifiedCredentialsOption`."],["The documentation provides links to best practices for managing service account keys and further information on authentication components."],["The latest version is `2.37.0-rc`, and this page contains the documentation for multiple versions ranging down to version `2.16.0`."]]],[]]
