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::gkemulticloud_v1::AttachedClustersClient(
google::cloud::gkemulticloud_v1::MakeAttachedClustersConnection(
"us-west1" /* regional service region */, 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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-07-09 UTC."],[[["This page provides documentation for overriding default authentication credentials when using Google Cloud client libraries, specifically focusing on GKE Multi-Cloud services."],["The latest version available is 2.37.0-rc, with multiple previous versions ranging from 2.36.0 down to 2.11.0 accessible via provided links."],["Authentication can be overridden using the `UnifiedCredentialsOption`, as demonstrated by an example showing how to load a service account key file."],["Examples for overriding credentials are provided for `AttachedClustersClient`, `AwsClustersClient`, and `AzureClustersClient` within the GKE Multi-Cloud v1 API."],["For more details on creating `google::cloud::Credentials` objects, refer to the linked \"Authentication Components\" documentation, and for service account key management, consult the \"Best practices\" guide."]]],[]]