Set up

This page walks you through the setup steps required to use the Cloud Spanner API.

If you want to use Cloud Spanner without using the API, see Quickstart using the console.

Before you begin

Your development machine should have the following installed:

• The Google Cloud SDK, which includes setting up the gcloud command-line tool (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 gcloud command-line tool, 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. Learn how to confirm billing is enabled for your project.

You can also learn about Cloud Spanner pricing.

5. Enable the Cloud Spanner API for the project.

   Enable the Cloud Spanner API

Set up authentication and authorization

Cloud Spanner uses OAuth 2.0 for API authentication and authorization.

To run your code locally during development and testing, use the Google Cloud SDK (the gcloud command-line tool) 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 Cloud Spanner in your production environment, learn about other options for credentials in Getting credentials for server-centric flow.

Run the gcloud command-line tool

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

gcloud spanner instance-configs list

You should see a list of the Cloud 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 Cloud Spanner instance, database, tables, and indexes. Then store, query, and read data in Cloud Spanner.

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