Compute Engine Client Libraries

The Google Compute Engine API is built on HTTP and JSON, so any standard HTTP client can send requests to it and parse the responses.

However, instead of creating HTTP requests and parsing responses manually, you might want to use client libraries to do so. Client libraries provide better language integration, improved security, and support for making calls that require user authorization.

You can use the Compute Engine API through a number of Google-provided libraries or through third-party open source libraries that are known to work on Compute Engine. This document describes the Google-provided libraries and also describes some available third-party open source libraries.

Available libraries

Community libraries

Google API client libraries

libcloud

libcloud is a Python library for interacting with many popular Cloud service providers through a single unified API.

Compute Engine Notes

The Apache libcloud API project has been receiving solid support and updates for Compute Engine since July 2013. It supports a broad set of Compute Engine features including instances, disks, networks/firewalls, and load balancer support. The handy getting-started demo gives a good code example of how to use libcloud and Compute Engine.

• Getting started
• Blog post
• GitHub

jclouds

jclouds is an open source library that allows you to use Java and Clojure across multiple Cloud providers.

Compute Engine Notes

The jclouds cloud API does have Compute Engine support in “labs”. See the jclouds-labs-google repository for work being done to provide Compute Engine support and to elevate the lab into jclouds-core.

• GitHub

fog.io

fog.io fog.io is an open source Ruby library that allows you to interact with multiple Cloud services through one API.

Compute Engine Notes

The fog.io cloud API has had support for Compute Engine since version 1.11.0 in May 2013. Take a look at the fog.io documentation to get started with Compute Engine and fog. It primarily supports instance operations such as create, destroy and bootstrap.

• GitHub

Google APIs Java Client Library

Google APIs .NET Client Library

Google APIs Go Client Library

This section contains information about getting started with the Compute Engine API using the Google APIs Go client library. In addition, you might be interested in the following documentation:

• Read the getting started guide for the Google APIs Go client library.
• Interact with the API in the browser, using the Google APIs Explorer.

Downloading and installing the library

To install the library, run the following command:

$ go get code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/compute/v1

Using the library

Import the library in your code:

package main

  import (
      "code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/compute/v1"
  )

Google APIs JavaScript Client Library

This section contains information about getting started with the Compute Engine API using the Google APIs JavaScript client library. In addition, you might be interested in the following documentation:

• Read the getting started guide.
• Learn how to develop using the JavaScript client library.
• See the Compute Engine-specific JavaScript getting started example.
• Interact with the API in the browser, using the Google APIs Explorer.

Using the API

To use the API, you must first load the library. In your code, add:

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/client.js?onload=handleClientLoad"></script>

Google APIs Ruby Client Library

$ gem install google-api-client

$ gem update -y google-api-client

Google APIs Node.js Client Library

This section contains information about getting started with the Compute Engine API using the Google APIs Node.js client library. In addition, you might be interested in the following documentation:

• Read the overview on GitHub.
• Interact with the API in the browser, using the Google APIs Explorer.

Installing the library

To install the Node.js library, you must use npm:

$ npm install googleapis

Using the library

Use the library to dynamically load your desired APIs:

var googleapis = require('googleapis');

googleapis
    .discover('compute', 'v1')
    .execute(function(err, client) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Problem during the client discovery.', err);
    return;
  }

Google APIs Objective C Client Library

This section contains information about getting started with the Compute Engine API using the Google APIs Objective C client library. In addition, you might be interested in the following documentation:

• Read the overview.
• Interact with the API in the browser, using the Google APIs Explorer.

Linking to the library

Follow the instructions to add the Google APIs Objective-C Client Library to a Project.

Google APIs PHP Client Library

This section contains information about getting started with the Compute Engine API using the Google APIs PHP client library. In addition, you might be interested in the following documentation:

• Read the Installation guide.
• Get the library from GitHub.
• Interact with the API in the browser, using the Google APIs Explorer.

Downloading the library

The library can be installed by adding it as a dependency to your composer.json.

"require": {
  "google/apiclient": "1.0.*"
}

If you prefer, the library is available on GitHub and can be cloned into a local repository with the git clone method.

git clone https://github.com/google/google-api-php-client.git .

Using the library

The best way to define the location of library files is to add it to the path in the PHP.ini configuration file.

include_path = ".:/usr/local/lib/php:/path/to/google-api-php-client/src"

Alternatively, the same ini directive can be set dynamically in your code.

set_include_path(get_include_path() . PATH_SEPARATOR . '/path/to/google-api-php-client/src');

Google APIs Python Client Library

$ cd myproject
$ unzip google-api-python-client-gae-1.2.zip

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