There are plenty of well known sites that use GAE
Example of large sites running on Google App Engine
But I wonder if there are examples of python open-source projects built on the GAE that I can simply download and play with.
I find it easier to learn by doing rather than reading throught the docs. Having a working model that I can launch locally would be more useful than all the reference material in the world because it would show me how to structure, configure + some best practices.
If I could have my wish-list, I'd look for an example that:
Actually does something - not just static pages
Makes use of a number of different entities, preferably with some relationships between them
Some templates
Possibly a RESTFUL API
Using the builtin webapp framework (not django etc)
Thanks!
Take a look at Google App Engine samples repository.
I've begun planning a kind of web store interface that I want to work on soon. I'm starting to import products from China and want to have a completely unique feel for my site. Now I'm kinda a google fanboy and have heard alot about google app engine. Mostly I like the hosting available with google more then anything though. But I wanted to know, would the App Engine be good for what I'm making?
Namely a web store with an app like feel. I've decided, to help if I ever need to move my host, to work in web2py hosted in the App Engine. Or would I be better with django or something on a normal host?
Is google best for webapps? Or is it pretty well suited for webstores as well?
Thanks
You can build almost anything on GAE. As Monk would say that is a blessing and a curse. GAE is relatively new and so e commerce ventures are relatively rare. This means you would be responsible for every piece of the site. Other dedicated e commerce technologies trade some of the control and look and feel for ease of use/setup.
So in short yes you could use GAE to create an e commerce site, but you would be spending a lot of time getting it up and running and then managing it. Time you may find better spent on sales and marketing.
It is hard to say if App Engine is suited to your particular needs without more details about what functionality you want your web store to present. It also depends a little bit on your background and experience.
However, the "app like feel" and crafting a "completely unique feel" for your site is something you can accomplish on any reasonable platform - I expect the presentation style will be relatively independent of the backend you choose.
i want to find a framework to make my work simple on gae ,
has it ?
thanks
i found one, but not very good http://code.google.com/p/appengine-framework/
There are a large number of frameworks you can use on App Engine - both those custom designed for it, and those that are general purpose and work fine on App Engine. If you've used a Python framework in the past, some small amount of searching will tell you if it will work on App Engine with or without modifications. Common frameworks that do work on App Engine include Django, web2py and Pylons.
There's a fairly comprehensive list or open source tools here.
I am thinking about using Google App Engine.It is going to be a huge website. In that case, what is your piece of advice using Google App Engine. I heard GAE has restrictions like we cannot store images or files more than 1MB limit(they are going to change this from what I read in the GAE roadmap),query is limited to 1000 results, and I am also going to se web2py with GAE. So I would like to know your comments.
Thanks
Having developed a smallish site with GAE, I have some thoughts
If you mean "huge" like "the next YouTube", then GAE might be a great fit, because of the previously mentioned scaling.
If you mean "huge" like "massively complex, with a whole slew of screens, models, and features", then GAE might not be a good fit. Things like unit testing are hard on GAE, and there's not a built-in structure for your app that you'd get with something like (famously) (Ruby on) Rails, or (Python powered) Turbogears.
ie: there is no staging environment: just your development copy of the system and production. This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your situation.
Additionally, it depends on the other Python modules you intend to pull in: some Python modules just don't run on GAE (because you can't talk to hardware, or because there are just too many files in the package).
Hope this helps
using web2py on Google App Engine is a great strategy. It lets you get up and running fast, and if you do outgrow the restrictions of GAE then you can move your web2py application elsewhere.
However, keeping this portability means you should stay away from the advanced parts of GAE (Task Queues, Transactions, ListProperty, etc).
The AppEngine uses BigTable as it's datastore backend. Don't try to write a traditional relational-database driven application. BigTable is much more well suited for use as a highly-scalable key-value store. Avoid joins if at all possible.
I wouldn't worry about any of this. After having played with Google App Engine for a while now, I've found that it scales quite well for large data sets. If your data elements are large (i.e. photos), then you'll need to integrate with another service to handle them, but that's probably going to be true no matter what with data of that size. Also, I've found BigTable relatively easy to work with having come from a background entirely in relational databases. Finally, Django is a somewhat hidden, but awesome, "feature" of Google App Engine. If you've never used it, it's a really nice, elegant web framework that makes a lot of common tasks trivial (forms come to mind here).
Google has just released version 1.3.0 of the SDK with support with a new Blobstore API for storage of files up to 50MB. See the post "App Engine SDK 1.3.0 Released Including Support for Larger User Uploads".
What about Google Wave? It's being built on appengine, and once live, real-time translatable chat reaches the corporate sector... I could see it hitting top 1000th... But then again, that's an internal project that gets to do special stuff other appengine apps can't.... Like hanging threads; I think... And whatever else Wave has under the hood...
If you are planning on a 'huge' website, then don't use App Engine. Simple as that. The App Engine is not built to deliver the next top 1000th website.
Allow me to also ask what do you mean by 'huge', how many simultaneous users? Queries per second? DB load?
For my little framework Pyxer I would like to to be able to use the Google AppEngine datastores also outside of AppEngine projects, because I'm now used to this ORM pattern and for little quick hacks this is nice. I can not use Google AppEngine for all of my projects because of its's limitations in file size and number of files.
A great alternative would also be, if there was a project that provides an ORM with the same naming as the AppEngine datastore. I also like the GQL approach very much, since this is a nice combination of ORM and SQL patterns.
Any ideas where or how I might find such a solution? Thanks.
Nick Johnson, from the app engine team himself, has a blog posting listing some of the alternatives, including his BDBdatastore.
However, that assumes you want to use exactly the same ORM that you use now in app engine. There are tons of ORM options in general out there, though I am not familiar with the state of the art in Python. This question does seem to address the issue though.
You might also want to look at AppScale, which is "a platform that allows users to deploy and host their own Google App Engine applications".
It's probably overkill for your purposes, but definitely something to look into.
There is also the Remote API which the bulkloader tool uses to upload or download data into/from the Datastore.
Maybe it could be used to have applications which are not hosted on AppEngine to still use the Datastore there.