About the API Gateway development environment
API Gateway gives you three basic ways to interact with the services and resources necessary to build APIs:
Google Cloud console
The Google Cloud console provides a web-based, graphical user interface that you can use to manage your Google Cloud console(Google Cloud) projects and resources. When you use the Google Cloud console, you create a new project, or choose an existing project, and use the resources that you create in the context of that project.
You can create multiple projects, so you can use projects to separate your work in whatever way makes sense for you. For example, you might start a new project if you want to make sure only certain team members can access the resources in that project, while all team members can continue to access resources in another project.
Command-line interface
If you prefer to work in a terminal window, the
Google Cloud CLI gives you access to the commands you need. The gcloud CLI can be used to manage
both your development workflow and your Google Cloud resources. See the gcloud
reference for the complete list of available commands.
Google Cloud also provides Cloud Shell, a browser-based, interactive shell environment for Google Cloud. You can access Cloud Shell from the Google Cloud console.
Cloud Shell provides:
- A temporary Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
- Command-line access to the instance from a web browser.
- A built-in code editor.
- 5 GB of persistent disk storage.
- Pre-installed Google Cloud CLI and other tools.
- Language support for Java, Go, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby and .NET.
- Web preview functionality.
- Built-in authorization for access to Google Cloud Console projects and resources.
Client libraries
The gcloud CLI includes client libraries that enable you to easily create and manage resources. Google Cloud client libraries expose APIs for two main purposes:
App APIs provide access to services. App APIs are optimized for supported languages, such as Node.js and Python. The libraries are designed around service metaphors, so you can work with the services more naturally and write less boilerplate code. The libraries also provide helpers for authentication and authorization.
Admin APIs offer functionality for resource management. For example, you can use admin APIs if you want to build your own automated tools.
For more on the API Gateway client library, see APIs and reference.