In addition to running Google Cloud CLI commands from the command line, you can run them from scripts or other automations — for example, when using Jenkins to drive automation of Google Cloud tasks.
Google Cloud SDK comes with a variety of tools like filtering,
formatting, and the --quiet flag, enabling you to effectively handle output
and automate tasks.
Basics of scripting with Google Cloud SDK
For a step-by-step guide to building basic scripts with the gcloud CLI, see this blog post: Scripting with gcloud: a beginner’s guide to automating Google Cloud tasks.
Authorization
When scripting with Google Cloud SDK, you'll need to consider authorization methods. Google Cloud SDK provides two options:
- User account authorization
- Service account authorization
User account authorization is recommended if you are running a script or other automation on a single machine.
To authorize access and perform other common Google Cloud SDK setup steps:
gcloud init
Service account authorization is recommended if you are deploying a script
or other automation across machines in a production environment. It is also the
recommended authorization method if you are running gcloud CLI commands on a
Compute Engine virtual machine instance where all users have access to
root.
To use service account authorization, use an existing service account or create a new one on the Service Accounts page:
Go to the Service Accounts page
To create and download the associated private key as a JSON-formatted key file, choose Manage Keys from the action menu for the service account.
To run the authorization, run
gcloud auth activate-service-account:
gcloud auth activate-service-