Create a Google Cloud Storage base connection using the Flow Service API

Last update: April 2, 2025

CREATED FOR:

  • Developer

A base connection represents the authenticated connection between a source and Adobe Experience Platform.

This tutorial walks you through the steps to create a base connection for Google Cloud Storage using the Flow Service API.

Getting started

This guide requires a working understanding of the following components of Adobe Experience Platform:

  • Sources: Experience Platform allows data to be ingested from various sources while providing you with the ability to structure, label, and enhance incoming data using Experience Platform services.
  • Sandboxes: Experience Platform provides virtual sandboxes which partition a single Experience Platform instance into separate virtual environments to help develop and evolve digital experience applications.

The following sections provide additional information that you will need to know in order to successfully connect to a Google Cloud Storage account using the Flow Service API.

Gather required credentials

In order for Flow Service to connect with your Google Cloud Storage account, you must provide values for the following connection properties:

CredentialDescription
accessKeyIdA 61-character, alphanumeric string used to authenticate your Google Cloud Storage account to Experience Platform.
secretAccessKeyA 40-character, base-64-encoded string used to authenticate your Google Cloud Storage account to Experience Platform.
bucketNameThe name of your Google Cloud Storage bucket. You must specify a bucket name if you want to provide access to a specific sub folder in your cloud storage.
folderPathThe path to the folder that you want to provide access to.

For more information about these values, see the Google Cloud Storage HMAC keys guide. For steps on how to generate your own access key ID and secret access key, refer to the Google Cloud Storage overview.

Using Experience Platform APIs

For information on how to successfully make calls to Experience Platform APIs, see the guide on getting started with Experience Platform APIs.

Create a base connection

A base connection retains information between your source and Experience Platform, including your source’s authentication credentials, the current state of the connection, and your unique base connection ID. The base connection ID allows you to explore and navigate files from within your source and identify the specific items that you want to ingest, including information regarding their data types and formats.

To create a base connection ID, make a POST request to the /connections endpoint while providing your Google Cloud Storage authentication credentials as part of the request parameters.

TIP
During this step, you can also designate the sub folders that your account will have access to by defining the bucket name and the path to the subfolder.

API format

POST /connections

Request

The following request creates a base connection for Google Cloud Storage:

curl -X POST \
  'https://platform.adobe.io/data/foundation/flowservice/connections' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
  -H 'x-api-key: {API_KEY}' \
  -H 'x-gw-ims-org-id: {ORG_ID}' \
  -H 'x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
      "name": "Google Cloud Storage connection",
      "description": "Connector for Google Cloud Storage",
      "auth": {
          "specName": "Basic Authentication for google-cloud",
          "params": {
              "accessKeyId": "accessKeyId",
              "secretAccessKey": "secretAccessKey",
              "bucketName": "acme-google-cloud-bucket",
              "folderPath": "/acme/customers/sales"
          }
      },
      "connectionSpec": {
          "id": "32e8f412-cdf7-464c-9885-78184cb113fd",
          "version": "1.0"
      }
  }'
PropertyDescription
auth.params.accessKeyIdThe access key ID associated with your Google Cloud Storage account.
auth.params.secretAccessKeyThe secret access key associated with your Google Cloud Storage account.
auth.params.bucketNameThe name of your Google Cloud Storage bucket. You must specify a bucket name if you want to provide access to a specific subfolder in your cloud storage.
auth.params.folderPathThe path to the folder that you want to provide access to.
connectionSpec.idThe Google Cloud Storage connection specification ID: 32e8f412-cdf7-464c-9885-78184cb113fd

Response

A successful response returns details of the newly created connection, including its unique identifier (id). This ID is required to explore your cloud storage data in the next tutorial.

{
    "id": "4cb0c374-d3bb-4557-b139-5712880adc55",
    "etag": "\"6507cfd8-0000-0200-0000-5e18fc600000\""
}