bq_auth() with ADC authentication yields "Error in if (self$params$as_header)"

[jpryda]

I'm having some trouble authenticating with my application default credentials - that it appears to find successfully - using bigrquery 1.2.0:

options(gargle_quiet = FALSE)

Sys.setenv(GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS='/Users/X/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json')
bq_auth()

Result:

trying token_fetch()
trying credentials_service_account()
Error: Argument 'txt' must be a JSON string, URL or file.
trying credentials_app_default()
file exists at ADC path: /Users/X/.config/gcloud/application_default_credentials.json
ADC cred type: authorized_user

src_bigquery(project = "my-project", dataset = "medical")

Result:

- Error in if (self$params$as_header) { : argument is of length zero

In versions < 1.2.0 I had circumnavigated this same error by assigning token$params$as_header to a boolean value:

if (!has_access_cred()) {
  token <- gargle::credentials_app_default("https://www.googleapis.com/auth/bigquery")
  token$params$as_header <- TRUE
  set_access_cred(token)
}

although bq_auth(token = token) now fails with the aforementioned error message.

[jennybc]

I think this should be fixed now, if you install dev gargle from GitHub:

devtools::install_github("r-lib/gargle")

however, I don't have any user creds stored in this manner, so have not tested it personally. I'd appreciate hearing back from you, after you try this.

Note that this type of credential + storage method is semi-deprecated from the Google side:

r-lib/gargle#78 (comment)

https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/auth/application-default/login

Note: Consider using a service account and the complementary gcloud auth activate-service-account to authorize access to Google Cloud Platform.

If you are using ADC in this way, you should probably also seriously consider switching to a service account token. I think that's going to have better support long-term by Google and gargle + bigrquery.

[jennybc]

Also, your credentials should be auto-discovered, so once we straighten the as_header issue out, you should not need to do auth explicitly yourself anymore.

[jpryda]

Thanks, it does indeed work now, and noted on the service account!

The last thing to mention for others is a correction to gargle's Git URI:

devtools::install_github("r-lib/gargle")

[jennybc]

correction to gargle's Git URI:

Oh, right thanks. I'll fix that. It's bigrquery that lives below r-dbi, d'oh.