failed with: failed to parse service account key JSON credentials: unexpected token

[steezeburger]

TL;DR

I followed the docs and included my credentials json as a one line secret in an environment for my github action, yet I get this error

Error: google-github-actions/auth failed with: failed to parse service account key JSON credentials: unexpected token '�', "�*^���ǿi�("... is not valid JSON

Expected behavior

For it to accept the json in the secret

Observed behavior

It did not accept the json in the secret

Action YAML

name: Deploy to Google Cloud Functions

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main  # or your default branch
  workflow_dispatch:  # allows manual triggers

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: cicd
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '>=22.0.0'
          cache: 'npm'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Build
        run: npm run build

      - id: 'auth'
        uses: google-github-actions/auth@v2
        with:
          credentials_json: '${{ secrets.GCP_SA_KEY }}'
          project_id: ${{ vars.GCP_PROJECT_ID }}

      - name: Setup Google Cloud SDK
        uses: google-github-actions/setup-gcloud@v2
        with:
          project_id: ${{ vars.GCP_PROJECT_ID }}

      - name: Deploy to Cloud Run Functions
        run: |
          just deploy

Log output

Run google-github-actions/auth@v2
  with:
    credentials_json: ***
    project_id: swap-routing-api-dev
    create_credentials_file: true
    export_environment_variables: true
    universe: googleapis.com
    cleanup_credentials: true
    access_token_lifetime: 3600s
    access_token_scopes: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform
    id_token_include_email: false
Error: google-github-actions/auth failed with: failed to parse service account key JSON credentials: unexpected token '�', "�*^���ǿi�("... is not valid JSON

Additional information

No response

[github-actions]

Hi there @steezeburger 👋!

Thank you for opening an issue. Our team will triage this as soon as we can. Please take a moment to review the troubleshooting steps which lists common error messages and their resolution steps.

[steezeburger]

My issue was caused because the json was wrapped in single quotes in the secret value. I think they did not play well with the single quotes in the example usage, i.e. credentials_json: '${{ secrets.GCP_SA_KEY }}'