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::datafusion_v1::DataFusionClient(
google::cloud::datafusion_v1::MakeDataFusionConnection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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 version available is 2.37.0-rc, with numerous other versions, down to 2.13.0, also listed.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eBy default, client libraries utilize Application Default Credentials to authenticate with Google Cloud Services, but this can be overridden.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe UnifiedCredentialsOption allows you to explicitly load a service account key file to override default credentials.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eYou can load a service account key file into an std::string, and use that string to override the authentication credentials, as shown in the example code.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eFor best practices on managing service account keys, refer to the provided Google Cloud documentation on the topic.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]