Instance Admin API

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

List Instances

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

 instances = client.list_instances() 

Instance Factory

To create an Instance object:

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

• location_id is the ID of the location in which the instance’s cluster will be hosted, e.g. 'us-central1-c' . location_id is required for instances which do not already exist.

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

You can also use Client.instance() to create a local wrapper for instances that have already been created with the API, or through the web console:

 instance = client.instance(existing_instance_id)
instance.reload() 

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 an instance (via a CreateInstance request), the Bigtable API will return a long-running operation and a corresponding Operation object will be returned by 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 .