Set up Enterprise Knowledge Graph API

This guide provides all required setup steps to start using Enterprise Knowledge Graph.

About the Google Cloud console

The Google Cloud console is a web UI used to provision, configure, manage, and monitor systems that use Google Cloud products. You use the Google Cloud console to set up and manage Enterprise Knowledge Graph resources.

Create a project

To use services provided by Google Cloud, you must create a project.

A project organizes all your Google Cloud resources. A project consists of the following components:

• A set of collaborators
• Enabled APIs (and other resources)
• Monitoring tools
• Billing information
• Authentication and access controls

You can create one project, or you can create multiple projects. You can use your projects to organize your Google Cloud resources in a resource hierarchy. For more information about projects, see the Resource Manager documentation.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Go to project selector

Enable the API

You must enable the Enterprise Knowledge Graph API for your project. For more information about enabling APIs, see the Service Usage documentation.

Enable the Enterprise Knowledge Graph API.

Enable the API

Set up authentication

Any client application that uses the API must be authenticated and granted access to the requested resources. This section describes important authentication concepts and provides steps for setting it up. For more information, see the Authentication overview.

About service accounts

There are multiple options for authentication, but we recommend that you use service accounts for authentication and access control. A service account provides credentials for applications, as opposed to end users. Projects own their service accounts. You can create many service accounts for a project. For more information, see Service accounts.

About roles

When calling an API, Google Cloud requires the calling identity (any applicable person, entity, or process and their defined attributes) to have the appropriate permissions. You can grant permissions by granting roles to a service account. For more information, see the Identity and Access Management (IAM) documentation.

For the purpose of trying the Enterprise Knowledge Graph API, you can use the Project > Owner role in the following steps. The Project > Owner role grants the service account full permission to resources in your project. If your service account does not require full permissions, you specify a more restrictive role using the Google Cloud console. For a list of permissions and roles for Enterprise Knowledge Graph, see Enterprise Knowledge Graph permissions and Enterprise Knowledge Graph roles. For information about managing permissions using IAM roles, see granting roles to service accounts.

About service account keys

Service accounts are associated with one or more public or private key pairs. When you create a new key pair, you download the private key. The Google Cloud CLI uses your private key to generate credentials when calling the API.

Note: Service account keys are a security risk if not managed correctly. You should choose a more secure alternative to service account keys whenever possible. If you must authenticate with a service account key, you are responsible for the security of the private key and for other operations described by Best practices for managing service account keys. If you are prevented from creating a service account key, service account key creation might be disabled for your organization. For more information, see Managing secure-by-default organization resources.

Create a service account and download the private key file

Create a service account:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Create service account page.

   Go to Create service account
2. Select your project.

3. In the Service account name field, enter a name. The Google Cloud console fills in the Service account ID field based on this name.

   In the Service account description field, enter a description. For example, Service account for quickstart.

4. Click Create and continue.

5. Grant the Project > Owner role to the service account.

   To grant the role, find the Select a role list, then select Project > Owner.

   Note: The Role field affects which resources the service account can access in your project. You can revoke these roles or grant additional roles later. In production environments, do not grant the Owner, Editor, or Viewer roles. Instead, grant a predefined role or custom role that meets your needs.
6. Click Continue.

7. Click Done to finish creating the service account.

   Do not close your browser window. You will use it in the next step.

Create a service account key:

1. In the Google Cloud console, click the email address for the service account that you created.
2. Click Keys.
3. Click Add key, and then click Create new key.
4. Click Create. A JSON key file is downloaded to your computer.
5. Click Close.

Use the service account key file in your environment

Provide authentication credentials to your application code by setting the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS. This variable applies only to your current shell session. If you want the variable to apply to future shell sessions, set the variable in your shell startup file, for example in the ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile file.

Linux or macOS

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="KEY_PATH"

Replace KEY_PATH with the path of the JSON file that contains your credentials.

For example:

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/home/user/Downloads/service-account-file.json"

Windows

For PowerShell:

$env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="KEY_PATH"

Replace KEY_PATH with the path of the JSON file that contains your credentials.

For example:

$env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="C:\Users\username\Downloads\service-account-file.json"

For command prompt:

set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=KEY_PATH

Replace KEY_PATH with the path of the JSON file that contains your credentials.