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."

• Click save to save the permission.

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

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.
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

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.

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 support@getcensus.com or start a conversation from the in-app chat.