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Table Admin API

After creating an Instance, you can interact with individual tables, groups of tables or column families within a table.

List Tables

If you want a comprehensive list of all existing tables in a instance, make a ListTables API request with Instance.list_tables():

>>> instance.list_tables()
[<google.cloud.bigtable.table.Table at 0x7ff6a1de8f50>,
 <google.cloud.bigtable.table.Table at 0x7ff6a1de8350>]

Table Factory

To create a Table object:

table = instance.table(table_id)

Even if this Table already has been created with the API, you’ll want this object to use as a parent of a ColumnFamily or Row.

Create a new Table

After creating the table object, make a CreateTable API request with create():

table.create()

If you would like to initially split the table into several tablets (tablets are similar to HBase regions):

table.create(initial_split_keys=['s1', 's2'])

Delete an existing Table

Make a DeleteTable API request with delete():

table.delete()

List Column Families in a Table

Though there is no official method for retrieving column families associated with a table, the GetTable API method returns a table object with the names of the column families.

To retrieve the list of column families use list_column_families():

column_families = table.list_column_families()

Column Family Factory

To create a ColumnFamily object:

column_family = table.column_family(column_family_id)

There is no real reason to use this factory unless you intend to create or delete a column family.

In addition, you can specify an optional gc_rule (a GarbageCollectionRule or similar):

column_family = table.column_family(column_family_id,
                                    gc_rule=gc_rule)

This rule helps the backend determine when and how to clean up old cells in the column family.

See Column Families for more information about GarbageCollectionRule and related classes.

Create a new Column Family

After creating the column family object, make a CreateColumnFamily API request with ColumnFamily.create()

column_family.create()

Delete an existing Column Family

Make a DeleteColumnFamily API request with ColumnFamily.delete()

column_family.delete()

Update an existing Column Family

Make an UpdateColumnFamily API request with ColumnFamily.delete()

column_family.update()

Next Step

Now we go down the final step of the hierarchy from Table to Row as well as streaming data directly via a Table.

Head next to learn about the Data API.