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::logging_v2::LoggingServiceV2Client(
google::cloud::logging_v2::MakeLoggingServiceV2Connection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-14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 in Google Cloud C++ client libraries for logging services.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe latest version documented is 2.37.0-rc, with a range of previous versions listed from 2.36.0 down to 2.11.0.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe client libraries typically use Application Default Credentials, but can be configured to override these defaults via the \u003ccode\u003eUnifiedCredentialsOption\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eAn example demonstrates loading a service account key file to explicitly set credentials using \u003ccode\u003eMakeServiceAccountCredentials\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eFor best practices on managing service account keys, see the linked Google Cloud IAM documentation, and for more information on creating credentials objects, refer to the Authentication Components section.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]