Google Cloud Vision - PHP from terminal - error loading credentials - php

Question

I'm trying to work with the Google Cloud Vision API with PHP. I created my first test page and when run from a website, the PHP works correctly with no issues. I have a new twist on my project and I want to run the same PHP code from the terminal.
The issue I'm having now though is that I get an error that my script doesn't have the credentials loaded.
Here is the code I'm using to load my credentials file that works in my website version...
putenv('GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=Credential-file.json');
This doesn't work on my Terminal run version of the code. So I've tried a couple other options like...
putenv('GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/Full/Path/To/Credential-file.json');
and
$_ENV['GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS'] = "/Full/Path/To/Credential-file.json";
The exact error is...
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught DomainException: Could not load the default credentials. Browse to https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/application-default-credentials for more information in /Library/WebServer/Documents/google_vision/vendor/google/auth/src/ApplicationDefaultCredentials.php:156
My question is... Is there a better way to load the credentials file when I'm trying to run my PHP from the terminal? Or what mistake am I making in my version?
I should mention that I'm running this on MacOS with the Google Cloud client libraries.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The error message indicates that the variable is not set properly (as opposed to it being set to an invalid path).
putenv only lasts the duration of the current script. Setting values on $_ENV does not make them available to getenv, the method used by the Google auth library. Are you setting the credentials environment variable within the same script you're executing?
You can provide the value in the invocation as well:
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/keyfile.json php my-script.php
Or set the variable in your terminal session:
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/keyfile.json
php my-script.php
If you're using Google\Cloud\Vision\V1\ImageAnnotatorClient, you can authenticate with a keyfile directly:
use Google\Cloud\Vision\V1\ImageAnnotatorClient;
$vision = new ImageAnnotatorClient([
'credentials' => '/path/to/keyfile.json
]);
Or with Google\Cloud\Vision\VisionClient:
use Google\Cloud\Vision\VisionClient;
$vision = new VisionClient([
'keyFilePath' => '/path/to/keyfile.json'
]);