`gsutil` commands

Introduction

gsutil is a CLI tool to work with data on Google Storage Service. Using the tool, you can query public data anonymously. However, to query private data, you need to authenticate. Gsutil can inherit the auth from gcloud CLI.

The general syntax to represent a bucket is:

gs://BUCKET_NAME/<FOLDER_NAME>/OBJECT_NAME

You can have any number of nested sub-folders within a bucket.

Buckets in GCS are globally-unique, even for private buckets.

Commands

Adapted from https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/discover-object-storage-gsutil

Creating a bucket

gsutil mb -b on -l us-east1 gs://my-awesome-bucket/

>>> Creating gs://my-awesome-bucket/...

Uploading objects to a bucket

gsutil cp <path>/<file> gs://<bucket>/folder

Downloading objects from a bucket

gsutil cp gs://<bucket>/folder/file <local dest>/<path>

You can also copy content from one bucket / folder to another using the same command.

gsutil cp gs://my-awesome-bucket/kitten.png gs://my-awesome-bucket/just-a-folder/kitten3.png

List contents of a bucket

gsutil ls gs://<bucket>

# returns
gs://my-awesome-bucket/kitten.png
gs://my-awesome-bucket/just-a-folder/

You can use -l flag for details.

Deleting objects

gsutil rm gs://<bucket>/file

You can use the -r recursive flag to remove folders, and even buckets.

gsutil commands