How do I configure Google BigQuery command line tool to use a Service Account?

1.) Tell gcloud to authenticate as your service account

gcloud auth activate-service-account \
[email protected] \
--key-file=/path/key.json \
--project=testproject

2.) Run a bq command as you would with your user account

# ex: bq query
bq query --use_legacy_sql=false 'SELECT CURRENT_DATE()'

3. optional) Revert gcloud authentication to your user account

gcloud config set account [email protected]

3a. optional) See who gcloud uses for authentication

gcloud auth list

The bq authorization flags are now deprecated

bq documentation

I ended up finding some documentation on how to set this up

$ bq --help

....

--service_account: Use this service account email address for authorization. For example, [email protected].
(default: '')

--service_account_credential_file: File to be used as a credential store for service accounts. Must be set if using a service account.

--service_account_private_key_file: Filename that contains the service account private key. Required if --service_account is specified.
(default: '')

--service_account_private_key_password: Password for private key. This password must match the password you set on the key when you created it in the Google APIs Console. Defaults to the default Google APIs Console private key password.
(default: 'notasecret')

....

You can either set these specifically on each bq (bigquery commandline client) request, ie:

$ bq --service_account --my-client-id--.apps.googleusercontent.com -- service_account_private_key_file ~/.bigquery.v2.p12 ... [command]

Or you can set up defaults in your ~/.bigqueryrc file like so

project_id = --my-project-id--
service_account = [email protected]
service_account_credential_file = /home/james/.bigquery.v2.cred
service_account_private_key_file = /home/james/.bigquery.v2.p12

The service account can be found in the Google API Console, and you set up service_account_private_key_password when you created your service account (this defaults to "notasecret").

note: file paths in .bigqueryrc had to be the full path, I was unable to use ~/.bigquery...

Some additional dependencies were required, you will need to install openssl via yum/apt-get

--yum--
$ yum install openssl-devel libssl-devel

--or apt-get--
$ apt-get install libssl-dev

and pyopenssl via easy install/pip

--easy install--
$ easy_install pyopenssl

--or pip--
$ pip install pyopenssl