cbt CLI overview

The cbt CLI is a command-line interface for performing several different operations on Bigtable . It is written in Go using the Go client library for Bigtable . Source code for the cbt CLI is available in the GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go GitHub repository. This repository is a mirror of code.googlesource.com/gocloud.

For information about Bigtable in general, see the overview of Bigtable.

Install the cbt CLI

You can install the cbt CLI as a gcloud CLI component.

The cbt CLI does not implement smart retries or error handling. When working in production environment, use a Bigtable client library or the Google Cloud console.

  1. Install the gcloud CLI.
  2. Run the following commands:

      gcloud components update
      gcloud components install cbt
    

    If the cbt CLI is already installed, the terminal window displays the All components are up to date message.

Verify the installation

Run a cbt CLI command to verify installation of the CLI:

cbt listinstances

The terminal window displays two columns named Instance Name and Info.

Create a .cbtrc file

You can store required options and parameters, such as -project, -instance, -creds, -admin-endpoint, or -data-endpoint options, in a single .cbtrc file for convenience.

  1. In your .cbtrc file, configure cbt to use your project and instance by 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 settings:

    project = project-id
    instance = quickstart-instance

    Now you can use the cbt CLI with your instance.

Use the cbt CLI

For details about using the cbt CLI , including a list of available commands, see the cbt CLI reference.