Google Software Development Kit (CLI for GCP) Installation and few CLI Examples

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Google Cloud Platform

Intro

Google like most of the cloud providers today, offers a simple Cloud shell solution with all required tools to connect to their platform securely using APIs. However, If you still want to have it on your laptop along with other development tools, you can always install Google Cloud SDK (Software Development Kit) (especially if it’s for educational purposes).

Cloud SDK includes the gcloudgsutil and bq command-line tool including few components that aren’t installed by default. GCloud is the main command line used to manage cloud resources and enabling services.

Requirement

Whether on Windows or Linux, the basic installation and use of Cloud SDK will require 2 elements:

Note: To access the GCP APIs using a specific language (like C++, Ruby etc), you can download the Cloud Client Libraries.

 

I. Cloud SDK Installation

  • Windows

    1- Download and execute the following Cloud SDK installer(current version: 355)
    2- Follow the on-screen instructions (the installer is also used to upgrade existing installations). 

Google Cloud SDK Setup

 

3- Run the version command to confirm that Cloud SDK was installed correctly.

C:\Users\brokedba gcloud --version
Google Cloud SDK 355.0.0
bq   2.0.71
core 2021.08.27
gsutil 4.67

C:\Users\brokedba> where gcloud
 > C:\Program Files (x86)\Cloud SDK\google-cloud-sdk\bin\gcloud
 > C:\Program Files (x86)\Cloud SDK\google-cloud-sdk\bin\gcloud.cmd

Note: The installation can also be done through PowerShell in one-liner command (gcloud,bq,gsutil commands can run from either Command Prompt or PowerShell).

PS C:\Users\brokedba> (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile("https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/channels/rapid/GoogleCloudSDKInstaller.exe", "$env:Temp\GoogleCloudSDKInstaller.exe")

Linux
There is either an all-in-one install using packages or using interactive shell script. Let’s start with the script

brokedba~$ curl -sL https://dl.google.com/dl/cloudsdk/channels/rapid/downloads/google-cloud-sdk-355.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz| sudo tar -xz && sudo bash ./google-cloud-sdk/install.sh

-- Workflow
Modify profile to update your $PATH and enable shell command
completion?
Do you want to continue (Y/n)?  y
The Google Cloud SDK installer will now prompt you to update an rc file to bring the Google Cloud CLIs into your environment.
Enter a path to an rc file to update, or leave blank to use
[/home/brokedba/.bashrc]:

brokedba~$ gcloud --version
Google Cloud SDK 355.0.0
bq 2.0.71
core 2021.08.27 gsutil 4.67

Ubuntu
Option A

We can use apt-get and install it as a package:

1. Add the Cloud SDK distribution URI as a package source

brokedba~$ echo "deb https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt cloud-sdk main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list

2. Import the GCP public key

brokedba~$ curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

3. Update and install the Cloud SDK

brokedba~$ curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -

Option B

If you are fine with just the core components (gcloud,gsutil,bq, gsutilkubectlanthoscli..) you can install snap package which also handles the Autoupdate.

brokedba~$ snap install google-cloud-sdk --classic

► REDHAT, Fedora, CENTOS, OLinux

# RHEL/OL/CENTOS (7,8+), Fedora 24+  
# – Create a DNF repo with CLoud SDK information 
[@localhost]$ sudo tee -a /etc/yum.repos.d/google-cloud-sdk.repo << EOM 
name=Google Cloud SDK
baseurl=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/repos/cloud-sdk-el8-x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/yum-key.gpg
       https://packages.cloud.google.com/yum/doc/rpm-package-key.gpg
EOM
# Install CLOUD SDK rpm package 
[r@localhost]# sudo yum install google-cloud-sdk

 

II. Initialize GCloud

Once your GCP Free Tier account is created and Cloud SDK installed. All you need is to run gcloud init command to:

1- Authorize Cloud SDK to access the GCP platform using your user account
2- Set a new configuration including proper parameters like current project and default GCE region/zone etc…

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-4.png

 

If you don’t want the browser’s auto-launch for authorization you can use --console-only or --no-launch-browser 

brokedba~$ gcloud init —-skip-diagnostics
Your current configuration has been set to: [default]
You must log in to continue. Would you like to log in (Y/n)?
 Go to the following link in your browser:    https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth?response_type=code&client_id=……………………………**
Enter verification code:
  • The interactive workflow will ask you to hit the displayed link on a browser after entering your user credentials

Google Cloud SDK Signin

  • When you click allow, a code will be provided which you will past on your terminal to complete the authorization

Google Sign In

  • Once authenticated, you will be asked to create a project if none exists in your account. project_id is globally unique
Part 2
 Enter verification code: 4/1AX4XfWhnJLpVgMtjxxxx..
  You are logged in as: [bdba@gmail.com].
  This account has no projects. Would you like to create one? (Y/n)?  y   
  Enter a Project ID. Note that a Project ID CANNOT be changed later.Project IDs 
  must be 6-30 characters in length and start with a lowercase letter. 
   brokedba2000
  Waiting for [operations/cp.9218677272527086685] to finish...done.     
 Your current project has been set to: [brokedba2000]. 
  • If you have an error while creating the project because of the error “Callers must accept Terms of Service” make sure you accepted the terms in the console.

Accept Terms and Conditions

  • You can now verify your default configuration after the initialization
$ gcloud config list
[compute]
region = us-east1
zone = us-east1-b
[core]
account = bdba@gmail.com
disable_usage_reporting = True
project = brokedba2000
Your active configuration is: [default]

 

III.Test your first API request

Command structure: is based on the below components

gcloud <--global flags> [service|product] <group|area> <command> <--flags> <parameters >

 group may be        access-approval | access-context-manager | 
                     active-directory | ai | ai-platform | anthos | 
                     api-gateway | apigee | app | artifacts | asset | 
                     assured | auth | bigtable | billing | builds | 
                     cloud-shell | components | composer | compute | 
                     config | container | data-catalog | database-migration | 
                     dataflow | dataproc | datastore | debug | deployment-manager | 
                     dns | domains | emulators | endpoints | essential-contacts | 
                     eventarc| filestore | firebase | firestore | functions | 
                     game | healthcare | iam | iap | identity | iot | kms | 
                     logging | memcache | metastore | ml | ml-engine | 
                     monitoring | network-management | network-security | 
                     notebooks | org-policies | organizations | 
                     policy-intelligence | policy-troubleshoot | 
                     privateca | projects | pubsub | recaptcha | recommender | 
                     redis | resource-manager | resource-settings | run | scc | 
                     scheduler | secrets | service-directory | services | source | 
                     spanner | sql | tasks | topic | workflows | workspace-add-ons 
command may be       cheat-sheet | docker | feedback | help | info | init| 
                     survey | version Optional flags  
                     --account | --billing-project | –configuration | –project |  
                     --flatten | --format | –filters | –quiet | --flags-file .. 

Topics: 
`gcloud topic` provides supplementary help for topics not directly associated with individual commands.

$ gcloud topic [TOPIC_NAME]
Available commands for gcloud topic:
      accessibility           Reference for `Accessibility` features.
      arg-files               Supplementary help for arg-files to be used with
                              *gcloud firebase test*.
      cli-trees               CLI trees supplementary help.
      client-certificate      Client certificate authorization supplementary
                              help.
      command-conventions     gcloud command conventions supplementary help.
      configurations          Supplementary help for named configurations.
      datetimes               Date/time input format supplementary help.
      escaping                List/dictionary-type argument escaping
                              supplementary help.
      filters                 Resource filters supplementary help.
      flags-file              --flags-file=YAML_FILE supplementary help.
      formats                 Resource formats supplementary help.
      gcloudignore            Reference for `.gcloudignore` files.
      projections             Resource projections supplementary help.
      resource-keys           Resource keys supplementary help.
      startup                 Supplementary help for gcloud startup options.
      uninstall               Supplementary help for uninstalling Cloud SDK.[core]
  • Result related flags  :

    1- “formats”: Will format gcloud output into JSON, yaml, Table, raw value, or CVS including projections.
    2- “–filter”: Allows to pick the list of rows to return in the output in combination with formats.
    Example > list projects that were created after Jan 1st 2021 and only show 3 specific columns

$ gcloud projects list --format="table(projectNumber,projectId,createTime)"     --filter="createTime>2021-01-01"
PROJECT_NUMBER  PROJECT_ID      CREATE_TIME
260799562386    brokedba2000  2021-09-06T22:57:41.421Z
  • Command Versions
    GCloud
     has different versions for its set of commands “alpha” and “beta”Alpha means that the feature is typically not ready for production and might still be actively developed. Beta on the other hand is normally a completed feature, that is being tested to be production-ready.

Examples 

There are few requests that you can run to practice with GCloud. The below commands are good examples to start with.

  • list GCP regions in the US by selecting 3 fields on a tabular format and filtering the content on a specific pattern “us-
$ gcloud compute regions list  --format="table[box](Name,CPUS,status)"    
--filter="name~us-"

+-----------------------------+
¦     NAME    ¦ CPUS ¦ STATUS ¦ 
------------------------------- 
¦ us-central1 ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
¦ us-east1    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
¦ us-east4    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
¦ us-west1    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
¦ us-west2    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
¦ us-west3    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦
¦ us-west4    ¦ 0/8  ¦ UP     ¦ 
+-----------------------------+ 
  • Create a new project and assign it to the current configuration
$ gcloud projects create My-new-project --name="MY new LAB"  --labels=type=lab
$ gcloud config set project My-new-project     
-- Check project
$ gcloud compute project-info describe –project My-new-project
  • Create and list Current VMS in the current project :
$ gcloud compute instances create myvm2 --machine-type=f1-micro --image-family debian-10 --image-project debian-cloud 

$ gcloud compute instances list  --filter="zone~ us-east1 OR -machineType:f1-micro" 

 NAME   ZONE        MACHINE_TYPE  PREEMPTIBLE  INTERNAL_IP  EXTERNAL_IP    STATUS
myvm   us-east1-b  f1-micro                   10.142.0.2   34.139.111.13  RUNNING| 
  • Create and list a bucket in google storage :
$ gsutil mb -l us-east1 gs://omarlittle
$ gsutil ls gs://omarlittle/**
..
  • Note: You can also display help on popular commands within a service or group/area which
$ gcloud help compute instances create

NAME
    gcloud compute instances create - create Compute Engine virtual machine
   instances
…

Enable APIs or install components

Not all APIs are enabled by default and not all CLOUD SDK components are installed by default. Manual enabling is necessary.

-- APIs
$ gcloud services list available
$ gcloud services enable  compute.googleapis.com 
-- components 
$ gcloud components list
$ gcloud components update
$ gcloud components install COMPONENT_ID 

 

Conclusion:

In this tutorial, we learned how to install and configure CLOUD SDK. We also described the command syntax and tried few requests using gGCoud and gsutil. Feel free to consult Gcloud Command Reference for more details and examples on cloud requests.

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