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::functions_v1::CloudFunctionsServiceClient(
google::cloud::functions_v1::MakeCloudFunctionsServiceConnection(
options));
}
Follow these links to find examples for other *Client classes:
[[["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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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 document provides a reference for overriding default authentication credentials when using Google Cloud client libraries.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe latest version available is 2.37.0-rc, with a comprehensive list of previous versions from 2.36.0 down to 2.11.0 for reference.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe client libraries default to using Application Default Credentials, but you can override this using the \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAn example is provided on how to load a service account key file explicitly for authentication purposes.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eLinks are provided to demonstrate how to apply this for \u003ccode\u003efunctions_v1::CloudFunctionsServiceClient\u003c/code\u003e and \u003ccode\u003efunctions_v2::FunctionServiceClient\u003c/code\u003e classes.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]