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This document explains the prerequisites for using the Compute Engine API.
Before you can start coding your first client application, there are a few things you need to do, if you haven't done them already.
Get a Google AccountYou need a Google Account to access the Compute Engine API. If you have an existing account, then you already have access.
You may also want a separate Google Account for testing purposes.
Sign up and try out Compute EngineTo get started, you can create a VM instance on Compute Engine by using one of the following guides:
Before you continue, it's important to become familiar with Compute Engine. The API documentation assumes that you have used Compute Engine and you're familiar with web programming concepts and web data formats.
Learn about authenticationThere are different ways to authenticate to Compute Engine depending on how you access the API. For more information, see Authenticate to Compute Engine.
Learn about RESTThere are two ways to invoke the API:
If you decide not to use client libraries, you'll need to understand the basics of REST.
REST basicsREST is a style of software architecture that provides a convenient and consistent approach to requesting and modifying data.
The term REST is short for "Representational State Transfer." In the context of Google APIs, it refers to using HTTP verbs to retrieve and modify representations of data stored by Google.
In a RESTful system, resources are stored in a data store; a client sends a request that the server perform a particular action (such as creating, retrieving, updating, or deleting a resource), and the server performs the action and sends a response, often in the form of a representation of the specified resource.
In Google's RESTful APIs, the client specifies an action using an HTTP verb such as POST, GET, PUT, or DELETE. It specifies a resource by a globally-unique URI of the following form:
https://www.googleapis.com/apiName/apiVersion/resourcePath?parameters
Because all API resources have unique HTTP-accessible URIs, REST enables data caching and is optimized to work with the web's distributed infrastructure.
You may find the method definitions in the HTTP 1.1 standards documentation useful; they include specifications for GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
The Compute Engine API operations map directly to REST HTTP verbs.
The Compute Engine API uses the following format for URIs:
https://www.googleapis.com/compute/API_VERSION/RESOURCE_PATH
The URI contains the following values:
API_VERSION: the API version that you want to use, which corresponds to the launch stage of a Compute Engine resource as follows:
v1betaalphaRESOURCE_PATH: the path to the specific Compute Engine resource—for example, projects/example-project/aggregated/instances. To see available resources for each API version, see the following:
If you want to include query parameters, then include them in the URI after a question mark (?):
https://www.googleapis.com/compute/API_VERSION/RESOURCE_PATH?QUERY_PARAMETERS
In the URI, QUERY_PARAMETERS is a list of query parameters, separated by ampersands (&)—for example, format=json&filter=zone=us-central1-a.
The Compute Engine API returns data in JSON format.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a common, language-independent data format that provides a simple text representation of arbitrary data structures. For more information, see json.org.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.
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