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::batch_v1::BatchServiceClient(
google::cloud::batch_v1::MakeBatchServiceConnection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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\u003eThe latest release candidate version is 2.37.0-rc, with the most recent stable release being version 2.36.0, and the webpage provides access to documentation for versions from 2.11.0 up to the latest release.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eBy default, client libraries utilize Application Default Credentials (ADC) for authenticating with Google Cloud Services, but users have the option to override this behavior.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAuthentication can be overridden using \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e, as demonstrated in the example of loading a service account key file.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eFor more information on creating \u003ccode\u003egoogle::cloud::Credentials\u003c/code\u003e objects and best practices for managing service account keys, you can refer to the "Authentication Components" and "Best practices for managing service account keys" documentation respectively.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]