authentication for GCP STT Quickstart problem - google-cloud-platform

Question

I am following the GCP Speech-to-Text Quickstart. As best as I can tell, I have followed all setup criteria.
Enabled STT for my project.
Generated Service API keys and downloaded the JSON file.
Installed SDK and initialized.
In Windows CMD shell, I set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to the downloaded JSON file.
In Windows CMD shell, I executed gcloud auth activate-service-account <my service email generated by GCP> --key-file= "mypath/JSON key file".
I executed gcloud auth list and I see my project account identifier.
I executed the example curl command:
curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer "$(gcloud auth application-default print-access-token) https://speech.googleapis.com/v1/speech:recognize -d #sync-request.json
And get this error:
{
"error": {
"code": 401,
"message": "Request had invalid authentication credentials. Expected OAuth 2 access token, login cookie or other valid authentication credential. See https://developers.google.com/identity/sign-in/web/devconsole-project.",
"status": "UNAUTHENTICATED"
}
}
No where in the Quickstart steps does it mention OAuth
As a test, I executed:
gcloud auth application-default print-access-token
And got this:
(gcloud.auth.application-default.print-access-token) File "mypath/JSON key file" was not found.
Even though the file exists in the folder I specify.
Trying something else, I tried executing the Java example in the SDK. It creates a very simple SpeechClient with no credentials, which seems suspect. I made the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS env variable available to the example. I think the example uses gRCP, but not sure.
The example hangs at:
RecognizeResponse response = speech.recognize(config, audio);
Looking online, I found the likely suspect is bad authentication, which is the same as trying the CMD line example.
Any and all guidance is appreciated.

Answer 1

Did you run the curl command from the same directory where your JSON key file is located?
Google's documentation states the following:
Note that to pass a filename to curl you use the -d option (for
"data") and precede the filename with an # sign. This file should be
in the same directory in which you execute the curl command.

Answer 2

I have the answer to the CLI issue. A dumb mistake on my part. When I set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS I wrapped the pathname in double quotes. Sigh. I reset the env variable without the double quotes.
I could successfully run gcloud auth application-default print-access-token and it printed out the token.
I tried the curl command again with $(gcloud auth....) and got same error. Next, I tried the curl command replacing the $(gcloud auth....) with the token returned above and it worked!
Next, I need to resolve the Java example and I am good.

Answer 3

No need to be suspicious:
If you don't specify credentials when constructing the client, the client library will look for credentials via the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS.
In your java code try to print System.getenv("GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS"), to verify it's set . Probably it's not, depending on how you are setting it in your IDE, or terminal.