Base for Everything¶
To use the API, the Client
class defines a high-level interface which handles authorization
and creating other objects:
from google.cloud.bigtable.client import Client
client = Client()
Long-lived Defaults¶
When creating a Client, the
user_agent argument has sensible a default
(DEFAULT_USER_AGENT).
However, you may over-ride it and the value will be used throughout all API
requests made with the client you create.
Configuration¶
For an overview of authentication in
google-cloud-python, see Authentication.In addition to any authentication configuration, you can also set the
GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECTenvironment variable for the Google Cloud Console project you’d like to interact with. If your code is running in Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine the project will be detected automatically. (Setting this environment variable is not required, you may instead pass theprojectexplicitly when constructing aClient).After configuring your environment, create a
Client>>> from google.cloud import bigtable >>> client = bigtable.Client()
or pass in
credentialsandprojectexplicitly>>> from google.cloud import bigtable >>> client = bigtable.Client(project='my-project', credentials=creds)
Tip
Be sure to use the Project ID, not the Project Number.
Admin API Access¶
If you’ll be using your client to make Instance Admin and Table Admin
API requests, you’ll need to pass the admin argument:
client = bigtable.Client(admin=True)
Read-Only Mode¶
If, on the other hand, you only have (or want) read access to the data,
you can pass the read_only argument:
client = bigtable.Client(read_only=True)
This will ensure that the
READ_ONLY_SCOPE is used
for API requests (so any accidental requests that would modify data will
fail).
Next Step¶
After a Client, the next highest-level
object is an Instance. You’ll need
one before you can interact with tables or data.
Head next to learn about the Instance Admin API.
