Google Cloud Storage

This page describes how to use Census with Google Cloud Storage.

Prerequisites

• Have your Census account ready. If you need one, create a Free Trial Census account now.

• Have your Google Cloud Storage Account in the Browser tab on the bucket that you want to sync to.

• Have the proper credentials to access to your data source. See our docs for each supported data source for further information:

  • Azure Synapse

  • Databricks

  • Elasticsearch

  • Google BigQuery

  • Google Sheets

  • MySQL

  • Postgres

  • Redshift

  • Snowflake

  • SQL Server

Step 1: Create a Google Cloud Storage Connection

Our Google Cloud destination behaves a little differently than other Census destinations. Instead of going through an OAuth connection flow, we provide you a Google Identity address to which you grant Storage Object permissions.

• In Census, navigate to Destinations

• Click the New Destination button, and select Google Cloud Storage

• Paste the name of the GCS bucket, name the connection, and click the Save Connection button

• Your new Google Cloud Storage connection will include a GCP service account for that specific Census connection. Click the copy button () to save it to your clipboard.

Step 2: Grant Access to GCS

• Now head to the Google Cloud Storage bucket that you want to sync to, and click into that bucket's details.

• Click the Permissions tab on the Bucket, then click "Add Permissions".

• Paste the credentials in the New Principals portion and select "Storage Object Admin."

You will be able to send a successful sync if the file path variables are unique per sync run by only granting this service account "Storage Object Creator", but the Test Connection in the next step will fail.

• Click save to save the permission.

• Then navigate back to the Destinations page and click "Test" on the service.

You are good to go!

Step 3: Create your first sync

The sync will move data from your warehouse to your GCS bucket. In this step, you'll define how that will work.

1. From inside your Census account, navigate to the Syncs page and click Add Sync.

2. Under What data do you want to sync?, choose your data warehouse as the Connection and your source: either a Model from the Census Models tab or a database table.

3. Under Where do you want to sync data to?, choose the name you assigned in Step 1 (we used GCS) as the Connection. Enter the File Path for the file where data will sync. The path can accept variables that will populate when the sync runs. See File Path Variables. Confirm the file path in the Template Preview field.

   __💡 If the service account only has "Storage Object Creator" permissions, this file path needs to be unique per sync run

4. Under How should changes to the source be synced?, Replace will be automatically selected. This is the only supported sync behavior for GCS.

5. Under Which properties should be updated?, choose whether to sync only Selected Properties or Sync All Properties. Syncing all properties will automatically add new properties to the sync if the model or database table changes.

6. To test your sync without actually syncing data, click Run Test and verify the results.

7. Click the Next button to see the final preview which will have a recap of what will happen when you start the sync. If you're happy, check the Sync Now checkbox and save the sync.

8. Confirm the data arrives in the GCS bucket!

If you need any help configuring GCS, contact the Census support team to get some help.

Supported Sync Behaviors

Behavior	Supported?	Objects
Replace	✅	All

Learn more about all of our sync behaviors on our Core Concepts page.

Let us know if you want Census to support additional sync behaviors for Google Cloud Storage.

File Path

When setting up a sync to GCS, you can provide a file path for the file name Census will create/replace. The file path can include folders. Data arrives in one file to the designated bucket and file path.

Variables

When defining the File Path, you can use variables that will be set when the sync runs. This allows you to create and sync to new files that reflect the date and time of the sync.

Variable	Description	Example Values
%Y	4-digit year	1997
%y	2-digit year	97
%m	month with zero padding	07, 12
%-m	month without zero padding	7, 12
%d	day with zero padding	03, 23
%-d	day without zero padding	3, 23
%H	24 hour with zero padding	08, 18
%k	24 hour without zero padding	8, 18
%I	12 hour with zero padding	08, 12
%l	12 hour without zero padding	8, 12
%M	minute with zero padding	04, 56
%S	second with zero padding	06, 54

Advanced Configuration

In addition to the file path, you can configure how the data is encoded as it is written. Primarily this is a question of file format:

• CSV - The standard comma separated values file. You can optionally specify an alternative delimeter such as |*, and you can enable/disable the header row.

• TSV - The tab separated values file. You can enable/disable the header row.

• JSON - A single JSON arraay of objects

• NDJSON - New line-delimited list of JSON objects

• Parquet - A columnar storage format that is more efficient for certain types of data.

• If your configured delimiter is present in data values, Census will automatically add double quotes around the value. Example: Hello, world is written as as "Hello, world" if the chosen delimiter is a comma.

In addition to file format, you can also provide a PGP Public Key to encrypt the data before it is written to the file. This is useful for ensuring that the data is secure in transit and at rest.

Other Things to Know

• Currently, the destination only supports syncing for files up to 5GB.

Contact us if your use cases don't work with these limitations. We plan on addressing at least a few of these in the future!

Need help connecting to Google Cloud Storage?

You can send our support team an email at [e-mail] or start a conversation from the in-app chat.