Instance Admin API#

Warning

gRPC is required for using the Cloud Bigtable API. As of May 2016, grpcio is only supported in Python 2.7, so importing gcloud.bigtable in other versions of Python will fail.

After creating a Client, you can interact with individual instances for a project.

List Intances#

If you want a comprehensive list of all existing intances, make a ListInstances API request with Client.list_intances():

intances = client.list_intances()

Instance Factory#

To create a Instance object:

instance = client.instance(instance_id, display_name=display_name)

display_name is optional. When not provided, display_name defaults to the instance_id value.

Even if this Instance already has been created with the API, you’ll want this object to use as a parent of a Table just as the Client is used as the parent of a Instance.

Create a new Instance#

After creating the instance object, make a CreateInstance API request with create():

instance.display_name = 'My very own instance'
instance.create()

Check on Current Operation#

Note

When modifying a instance (via a CreateInstance request), the Bigtable API will return a long-running operation and a corresponding Operation object will be returned by create() <gcloud.bigtable.instance.Instance.create>`().

You can check if a long-running operation (for a create() has finished by making a GetOperation request with Operation.finished():

>>> operation = instance.create()
>>> operation.finished()
True

Note

Once an Operation object has returned True from finished(), the object should not be re-used. Subsequent calls to finished() will result in a ValueError.

Get metadata for an existing Instance#

After creating the instance object, make a GetInstance API request with reload():

instance.reload()

This will load display_name for the existing instance object.

Update an existing Instance#

After creating the instance object, make an UpdateInstance API request with update():

client.display_name = 'New display_name'
instance.update()

Delete an existing Instance#

Make a DeleteInstance API request with delete():

instance.delete()

Next Step#

Now we go down the hierarchy from Instance to a Table.

Head next to learn about the Table Admin API.