How to store GCP Service Account JSON in a terrafrom variable?

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My terraform gcp provider config looks like

provider "google" {
  project     = var.project
  region      = var.region
  credentials = file("account.json")
}

I want to run my terraform file on terraform cloud and I don't want want to put the account.json file in source control. How can I store the json GCP service account file in terraform cloud and then access it from the terraform script?

terraform-cloud terraform-provider-gcp terraform
3 Answers

You can supply the credentials as an Multi-Line value called google_credentials in the Terraform Cloud UI and mark it as a Sensitive Value and enter something like this with the correct values for your account (likely just a copy paste of your account.json file you have already):

{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "project-id",
  "private_key_id": "key-id",
  "private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\nprivate-key\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
  "client_email": "service-account-email",
  "client_id": "client-id",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/robot/v1/metadata/x509/service-account-email"
}

You can then provide the credentials from the workspace variable to your google provider in your Terraform module as follows as a single variable which will be interpreted as JSON:

provider "google" {
  project     = var.project
  region      = var.region
  credentials = var.google_credentials
}

variable "google_credentials" {
  description = "the contents of a service account key file in JSON format."
  type = string
}

credentials - (Optional) Either the path to or the contents of a service account key file in JSON format. You can manage key files using the Cloud Console.

From Google Provider Configuration Reference.

user_1545270

A better answer would be to remove the newline in the service account key file by running

tr -d '\n' < current_service_key.json > no_new_line_key.json

Paste the content of "no_new_line_key.json" to the variable section of Terraform Cloud and use any of the variable names such as GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS or GOOGLE_CLOUD_KEYFILE_JSON documented here:(https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/google/latest/docs/guides/provider_reference). I used GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS

Screenshot of the configuration

user_81112120

You can always export below variable in your shell environment and omit passing on credentials through provider entry

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/~/path/to/gcp-sa.json"

user_77863580
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