Getting started with Google Cloud Platform

This page contains information to help you get started with Google Cloud Project in Semarchy xDI.

Overview

This Metadata is the main entry point for defining Google Cloud accounts and credentials, and is required to use any other Google Cloud technologies.

Read on to find out how to create the Google Cloud Project Metadata, and add account and credential information.

Metadata Configuration

Creation

The first step is to create a Google Cloud Project Metadata.

Launch the Metadata creation wizard, select the Google Cloud Project Metadata in the list and follow the wizard.

Configuration

The first information to define in Metadata is the Google Cloud Project Identifier, which is the unique identifier of the project you want to work on.

Check with your administrator or lead to Google Cloud Project’s console page in your browser to find it, and then define it in Metadata.

getting started google cloud platform project id

Next step is to define credentials to connect and perform operations on the project.

For this, create an Account node under the root node.

getting started google cloud platform account

And then define the Credentials Mode, which defines how the credentials will be provided.

In all cases, the credential represents the JSON private key file containing the access token, which can be generate from Google Cloud Platform’s by administrators.

The following modes are available.

Name	Description
ApplicationDefault	When using this mode, the credentials will try to be retrieved automatically by Google APIs. They will first be searched from an environment variable named GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS. If the environment variable does not exist, it will search in the current Google engine. TIP: Refer to Authenticating as a service Google documentation for further details.
LocalFile	Absolute file path to the JSON private key file corresponding to the account to connect with. Note that it must be accessible by the Runtime on the file system.
String	JSon Access token string. This corresponds to the content of the JSON private key file corresponding to the account to connect with. To fill this attribute, open your JSON private key file, copy its content and paste it in the attribute. The benefit is that, instead of using a file path as with the other attribute, you specify the credentials directly in Metadata, so you do not have to store a local file somewhere that can be accessed by the Runtime. The downside is that this attribute is stored as plain text inside the Metadata. We advise to use it for development purposes, and to consider using the applicationDefault or LocalFile modes for production environments.

Name

Description

ApplicationDefault

When using this mode, the credentials will try to be retrieved automatically by Google APIs.

They will first be searched from an environment variable named GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS.
If the environment variable does not exist, it will search in the current Google engine.

TIP: Refer to Authenticating as a service Google documentation for further details.

LocalFile

Absolute file path to the JSON private key file corresponding to the account to connect with.

Note that it must be accessible by the Runtime on the file system.

String

JSon Access token string. This corresponds to the content of the JSON private key file corresponding to the account to connect with.

To fill this attribute, open your JSON private key file, copy its content and paste it in the attribute.

The benefit is that, instead of using a file path as with the other attribute, you specify the credentials directly in Metadata, so you do not have to store a local file somewhere that can be accessed by the Runtime.

The downside is that this attribute is stored as plain text inside the Metadata.

We advise to use it for development purposes, and to consider using the applicationDefault or LocalFile modes for production environments.

Here is an example of JSON credential file:

{
  "type": "service_account",
  "project_id": "mygoogleproject",
  "private_key_id": "myprivatekey",
  "private_key": "myprivatekeyvalue",
  "client_email": "myaccountemail",
  "client_id": "myclientid",
  "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
  "token_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/token",
  "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
  "client_x509_cert_url": "mycerturl"
}

Example with application default

getting started google cloud platform mode 1

Example with local file

getting started google cloud platform mode 2

Example with string

getting started google cloud platform mode 3

Next steps

Your Google Cloud Project Metadata is now ready.

You can start using it in related Google Cloud Platform technologies, such as Google Cloud Storage.

Sample project

The Google Cloud Platform component is distributed with sample projects that contain various examples and files. Use these projects to better understand how the component works, and to get a head start on implementing it in your projects.

Refer to Install components in Semarchy xDI Designer to learn about importing sample projects.