How-to set up Google Cloud (GCP) credentials in HCP Terraform – HashiCorp Help Center

Introduction

In this article we will explain how to set up your GCP credentials in HCP Terraform (formerly Terraform Cloud).

Requirements:

Authenticate to GCP
Set up Google Cloud Service Account
Download your JSON key file

Use Case

In Terraform documentation for GCP provider the authentication is done by pointing to the location of the JSON key file which is not a suitable approach for Terraform Cloud.

Solutions

We can set the GCP credentials in two ways:

1. As Terraform Variable

Having the following example code we will create variable named gcp-creds:

provider "google" {
  project     = "<YOUR PROJECT>"
  region  = "<YOUR REGION>"
  zone    = "<YOUR ZONE>"
  credentials = var.gcp-creds
}


variable "gcp-creds" {
default= ""
}

then we create a Terraform variable in Terraform Cloud named gcp-creds and we populate the content of JSON key file as its value.

Note:
Please don't forget to set up the variable as sensitive.

2. As Environment Variable

We create Environment variable named GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS in Terraform Cloud and for that value we set the output of your JSON file but without tabs and new lines.

For example the output of cat file.json | jq -c.

Note:
Please don't forget to set up the variable as sensitive.