Setup - Install the gcloud CLI and set up the Cloud Spanner API

This page walks you through the setup steps required to use the Cloud Spanner API with the Google Cloud CLI and client libraries.

If you want to use Spanner with the Google Cloud console, see Quickstart using the console.

Before you begin

Your development machine should have the following installed:

• The gcloud CLI, which includes setting up the Google Cloud CLI (download).

Set up a Google Cloud project

1. Go to the Projects page in the Google Cloud console.

   Go to the Projects page

2. Create a new Google Cloud project, or open an existing project by clicking on the project name.
Important: The name you use must be between 4 and 30 characters. When you type the name, the form will suggest a project ID, which you can edit. The project ID you use must be between 6 and 30 characters, with a lowercase letter as the first character. You can use a dash, lowercase letter, or digit for the remaining characters, but the last character cannot be a dash. You should be aware that some resource identifiers (such as project IDs) might be retained beyond the life of your project. For this reason, avoid storing sensitive information in resource identifiers.
...see naming guidelines

3. Open a terminal window, and set your project as the default project for the Google Cloud CLI, replacing MY_PROJECT_ID with your project ID (not your project name):

   gcloud config set project MY_PROJECT_ID

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

You can also learn about Spanner pricing.

5. Enable the Cloud Spanner API for the project.

   Enable the Cloud Spanner API

   Note: If you use a service account in a different project to access your Spanner instance, you need to enable the Cloud Spanner API in both projects.

Set up authentication and authorization

Spanner uses OAuth 2.0 for API authentication and authorization.

To run your code locally during development and testing, use the Google Cloud CLI along with Application Default Credentials. At a command prompt, run:

gcloud auth application-default login

After you authenticate using the gcloud auth application-default login command, API client libraries that use the application default credentials automatically pick up the created credentials. You need to run the command only once per local user environment.

Note: Using gcloud auth application-default login is suitable for local development. When you are ready to use Spanner in your production environment, learn about other options for credentials in Getting credentials for server-centric flow.

Run the Google Cloud CLI

Now that you've set up your development environment and authentication, run the gcloud command-line tool to interact with Spanner:

gcloud spanner instance-configs list

You should see a list of the Spanner instance configurations that your project can access, including regional and multi-region configurations. Learn more about these in Instances.

You've completed the setup!

What's next

Learn how to use the Cloud Client Libraries to create a Spanner instance, database, tables, and indexes. Then store, query, and read data in Spanner.

• Getting started with Spanner in C++
• Getting started with Spanner in C#
• Getting started with Spanner in Go
• Getting started with Spanner in Java
• Getting started with Spanner in Node.js
• Getting started with Spanner in PHP
• Getting started with Spanner in Python
• Getting started with Spanner in Ruby
• Getting started with Spanner in REST
• Getting started with Spanner in gcloud