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::apphub_v1::AppHubClient(
google::cloud::apphub_v1::MakeAppHubConnection(options));
}
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eThis document details how to override the default authentication credentials used by client libraries when interacting with Google Cloud Services.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe default authentication uses Application Default Credentials, but you can override this by using the \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eA service account key file can be explicitly loaded to override default credentials, as demonstrated in the provided example.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe document references the \u003ca href=\"https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/best-practices-for-managing-service-account-keys\"\u003eBest practices for managing service account keys\u003c/a\u003e guide and the \u003ca href=\"https://cloud.google.com/cpp/docs/reference/common/latest/group__guac.html\"\u003eAuthentication Components\u003c/a\u003e for more details on authentication.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe document lists all the available versions from 2.23.0 to 2.37.0-rc and the document itself is for version 2.29.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]