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::vpcaccess_v1::VpcAccessServiceClient(
google::cloud::vpcaccess_v1::MakeVpcAccessServiceConnection(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 2025-03-21 UTC."],[[["The latest version available is 2.37.0-rc, with numerous preceding versions down to 2.11.0 also accessible."],["The client libraries use Application Default Credentials for authentication by default unless configured otherwise."],["You can override the default authentication by using the UnifiedCredentialsOption, such as by explicitly loading a service account key file."],["Refer to the \"Best practices for managing service account keys\" guide for detailed information on handling service account keys."],["The Authentication Components section provides further information on factory functions for creating `google::cloud::Credentials` objects."]]],[]]