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::datastream_v1::DatastreamClient(
google::cloud::datastream_v1::MakeDatastreamConnection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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, and this page provides documentation for version 2.36.0, alongside a list of previous versions dating back to 2.11.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eClient libraries typically utilize Application Default Credentials for Google Cloud Service authentication, but you can override this default if needed.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eYou can override the default authentication by supplying the UnifiedCredentialsOption, which is illustrated with a service account key file loading example.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe provided code example demonstrates loading a service account key file and setting the UnifiedCredentialsOption, with a recommendation to review the best practices for managing service account keys.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAdditional information regarding the creation of \u003ccode\u003egoogle::cloud::Credentials\u003c/code\u003e objects can be found in the "Authentication Components" section, which provides links to factory functions.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]