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::connectors_v1::ConnectorsClient(
google::cloud::connectors_v1::MakeConnectorsConnection(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 2025-05-07 UTC."],[[["This page provides documentation for overriding default authentication credentials in the Google Cloud C++ client libraries."],["The latest release candidate version is 2.37.0-rc, with a range of past versions from 2.36.0 down to 2.11.0 also documented."],["Users can override the default credentials by providing the `UnifiedCredentialsOption`, as shown in the example demonstrating how to load a service account key file."],["The documentation recommends consulting the \"Best practices for managing service account keys\" guide for further information on service account key management."],["The [Authentication Components](https://cloud.google.com/cpp/docs/reference/common/latest/group__guac.html) page gives more information on factory functions that create [`google::cloud::Credentials`](https://cloud.google.com/cpp/docs/reference/common/latest/classgoogle_1_1cloud_1_1Credentials.html) objects."]]],[]]