Google Cloud APIs

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Introduction

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Hundreds of services from Google are available to consumers as API. Every API has a specific purpose. Over a period of time, google keeps clubbing these API endpoints (a url/place where a service is available), cleaning their code and improving the capabilities of these services. Therefore, sometimes it looks endpoint or pip package is the same, but its API name is different. Recently when google clubbed their many AI APIs they are moved under VertexAI and API endpoint changed to aiplatform.googleapi.com. To bring some clarity for my own sake and some of you may like this, I wrote this article.

Suppose you want to try these API services from your local machine or on premise machine. You need to do the following.

1. You need to install google cloud SDK on the machine.
2. Use gcloud command to connect google project. Because when you use google cloud API, Google will charge you for that. And all the charges are against some resources (service API, virtual machine, storage, processing etc). These resources are managed under a Google project. You can set budget for these services at project level. Thus, it becomes easy to track your expenses and budget.
3. Create virtual environment using python virtualenv command or conda command
4. Activate the virtual environment.
5. pip install the package in that environment (for this you can refer the table below)
6. Write your code in python to consume the API service.
7. Execute the code on the command prompt.

At the GCP (cloud.google.com) end, you need to

1. Enable the corresponding API.
2. Create the API key. Sometimes you may access the service with API key.
3. Create a service user and authorize this service user to access that API service.

Google API List and Endpoints

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Price of the API Services

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The price for each of these API services is different. You can know that using the following link. https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/{API-Endpoint} API-Endpoint you can refer to the table below. Then you can get the price information from the price tab. For example https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/vision.googleapis.com you can the price of the vision service.

• cloud.google.com/pricing/list

If you are using AI API services, then the price depends on what specific AI service you are using. For example.

• AutoML Human Labeled Images With 1 Rater
• AutoML Human Labeled Images With 3 Raters
• AutoML Image Classification Batch Prediction for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Classification Model Training Compute Hours
• AutoML Image Classification Model Training First Compute Hours
• AutoML Image Classification On-Device Model Training for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Classification Model Online Predictions
• AutoML Image Classification Model Deployment for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Classification Model Training for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Object Detection Batch Prediction for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Object Detection On-Device Model Training for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Object Detection Model Deployment for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• AutoML Image Object Detection Model Training for AutoML Vision or Vertex AI
• Crop Hints Operations
• Document Text Detection Operations
• Face Detection Operations
• Image Properties Operations
• Label Detection Operations
• Landmark Detection Operations
• Logo Detection Operations
• Object Localization Operations
• Safe Search Detection Operations
• Text Detection Operations
• Web Detection Operations
• Product Search Metadata Storage

Important Google Cloud Commands

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• $gcloud help - Displays help for a specific gcloud command.
• $gcloud –help - Displays a list of all available gcloud commands.
• $gcloud –version - Displays the version of the gcloud CLI.
• $gcloud init - Initializes the gcloud CLI and sets your default project.
• $gcloud projects list - Lists all of your Google Cloud projects.
• $gcloud compute instances create - Creates a new Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
• $gcloud compute instances list - Lists all of your Compute Engine virtual machine instances.
• $gcloud compute instances start - Starts a Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
• $gcloud compute instances stop - Stops a Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
• $gcloud compute instances delete - Deletes a Compute Engine virtual machine instance.
• $gcloud compute firewall-rules create - Creates a new Compute Engine firewall rule.
• $gcloud compute firewall-rules list - Lists all of your Compute Engine firewall rules.
• $gcloud compute firewall-rules delete - Deletes a Compute Engine firewall rule.
• $ gcloud iam service-accounts create SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME
• $ gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID
• $ gcloud auth application-default login
• $ gcloud services enable pubsub.googleapis.com
• $ gcloud services disable pubsub.googleapis.com

Google Cloud SDK: Tools for all languages

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• Cheatsheet of Google Cloud Commands
• “Google Cloud CLI” lets you manage resources and services from the command line. It also contains service and data emulators to speed up local development.
• “Cloud Shell” lets you code or use a terminal directly in the web-browser.
• “Cloud Code” provides IDE extensions for VSCode and IntelliJ.

Google Cloud Libraries

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• Google Cloud API Libraries in Different Languages
• Google Cloud Python Library of API on Github
• API Library List