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::domains_v1::DomainsClient(
google::cloud::domains_v1::MakeDomainsConnection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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 page provides documentation for overriding default authentication credentials when using Google Cloud client libraries, with version-specific information available from 2.12.0 to 2.37.0-rc.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eBy default, client libraries use Application Default Credentials for authentication, but you can override this by using the \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe provided example demonstrates overriding credentials by loading a service account key file and setting it within \u003ccode\u003egoogle::cloud::Options\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003eAuthentication Components\u003c/code\u003e link provides more information on factory functions for creating \u003ccode\u003egoogle::cloud::Credentials\u003c/code\u003e objects.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe latest version is 2.37.0-rc, which is the latest release candidate, but the most current full release is 2.36.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]