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::privilegedaccessmanager_v1::
PrivilegedAccessManagerClient(
google::cloud::privilegedaccessmanager_v1::
MakePrivilegedAccessManagerConnection(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complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-07-09 UTC."],[[["The latest version of the documentation available is 2.37.0-rc, with various prior versions listed, including 2.36.0 down to 2.27.0."],["By default, client libraries use Application Default Credentials for Google Cloud Service authentication, but this can be overridden."],["You can override the default authentication by utilizing the UnifiedCredentialsOption and providing explicit credentials, such as loading a service account key file."],["The provided code example demonstrates how to load a service account key file to override the default authentication credentials."],["For more information on creating `google::cloud::Credentials` objects, refer to the Authentication Components documentation."]]],[]]
