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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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 2.36.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe client libraries primarily use Application Default Credentials for Google Cloud service authentication, but this can be overridden.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAuthentication can be overridden by providing the \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e, such as by loading a service account key file, as shown in the code example.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003eAuthentication Components\u003c/code\u003e page offers further details on creating \u003ccode\u003egoogle::cloud::Credentials\u003c/code\u003e objects.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eRefer to the \u003ccode\u003eBest practices for managing service account keys\u003c/code\u003e guide for more information regarding service accounts.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]