Create an instance and write data with the cbt CLI

If you're learning about Bigtable, you can work through a quickstart to get a taste of the fundamentals that you would use at scale in a production environment.

In this quickstart, you perform the following actions:

• Connect to a Bigtable instance.
• Perform basic administrative tasks.
• Write data to a table.
• Read data from a table.

Before you begin

1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
2. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

3. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

   gcloud init

4. Create or select a Google Cloud project.

   Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

   • Create a Google Cloud project:

     gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID

     Replace PROJECT_ID with a name for the Google Cloud project you are creating.

   • Select the Google Cloud project that you created:

     gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

     Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project name.

5. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

6. Enable the Cloud Bigtable and Cloud Bigtable Admin APIs:

   gcloud services enable bigtable.googleapis.com bigtableadmin.googleapis.com

7. Grant roles to your user account. Run the following command once for each of the following IAM roles: roles/bigtable.admin

   gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID --member="USER_IDENTIFIER" --role=ROLE

   • Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

   • Replace USER_IDENTIFIER with the identifier for your user account. For example, user:[e-mail].

   • Replace ROLE with each individual role.
8. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

9. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

   gcloud init

10. Create or select a Google Cloud project.

    Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

    • Create a Google Cloud project:

      gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID

      Replace PROJECT_ID with a name for the Google Cloud project you are creating.

    • Select the Google Cloud project that you created:

      gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

      Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project name.

11. Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

12. Enable the Cloud Bigtable and Cloud Bigtable Admin APIs:

    gcloud services enable bigtable.googleapis.com bigtableadmin.googleapis.com

13. Grant roles to your user account. Run the following command once for each of the following IAM roles: roles/bigtable.admin

    gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID --member="USER_IDENTIFIER" --role=ROLE

    • Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

    • Replace USER_IDENTIFIER with the identifier for your user account. For example, user:[e-mail].

    • Replace ROLE with each individual role.
14. Run the following command to install the cbt CLI :

    gcloud components install cbt

Create a Bigtable instance

1. Open the Create instance page in the Google Cloud console.

   Create an instance

2. For Instance name, enter Quickstart instance.

3. For Instance ID, enter quickstart-instance.

4. Click Continue.

5. For Storage type, select SSD.

6. Click Continue.

7. For Cluster ID, enter quickstart-instance-c1.

8. For Region, select a region near you.

9. For Zone, select Any.

10. For Node scaling mode, choose Manual allocation.

11. For Quantity, select 1.

12. Click Create to create the instance.

Connect to your instance

1. Configure the cbt CLI to use your project and instance by creating a .cbtrc file, replacing PROJECT_ID with the ID for the project where you created your Bigtable instance:

   echo project = PROJECT_ID >> ~/.cbtrc && echo instance = quickstart-instance >> ~/.cbtrc
   

2. Verify that you set up the .cbtrc file correctly:

   cat ~/.cbtrc

   The terminal displays the contents of the .cbtrc file, which looks similar to the following:

   project = PROJECT_ID
   instance = quickstart-instance

   Now you can use the cbt CLI with your instance.

Read and write data

Bigtable stores data in tables, which contain rows. Each row is identified by a row key.

Data in a row is organized into column families, which are groups of columns. A column qualifier identifies a single column within a column family.

There can be multiple time-stamped cells at the intersection of a row and column.

1. Create a table named my-table.

   cbt createtable my-table

2. List your tables:

   cbt ls

   The command displays output similar to the following:

       my-table

3. Add one column family named cf1:

   cbt createfamily my-table cf1

4. List your column families:

   cbt ls my-table

   The command displays output similar to the following:

       Family Name     GC Policy
       -----------     ---------
       cf1             <never>

5. Write the values test-value1 and test-value2 to the row r1, using the column family cf1 and the column qualifier c1:

   cbt set my-table r1 cf1:c1=test-value1
     cbt set my-table r1 cf1:c1=test-value2
   

6. Use the cbt read command to read the data you added to the table:

   cbt read my-table

   The shell displays output similar to the following:

       ----------------------------------------
       r1
         cf1:c1                                   @ 2023/03/22-06:56:11.323000
           "test-value1"
         cf1:c1                                   @ 2023/03/22-06:56:04.361000
           "test-value2"

   Two timestamped values are stored for the same column in row r1.

   Note: In this quickstart you set only two cells, but Bigtable lets you set up to 10,000 cells in a single write request.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this quickstart, delete the instance. Deleting the .cbtrc file leaves you ready to work on a different project.

1. Delete the table my-table:

   cbt deletetable my-table

2. Delete the instance:

   cbt deleteinstance quickstart-instance

3. Delete the .cbtrc file:

   rm ~/.cbtrc

4. Optional: Revoke credentials from the gcloud CLI:

   gcloud auth revoke

What's next

• Work through a Bigtable codelab.
• View the cbt CLI reference documentation.
• See sample source code for a fraud detection use case.
• Write a Hello World application in C#, C++, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, or using the HBase client for Java.