Cloud - Web and Service Cloud

Google AppEngine is alot of fun, not only is it a good excuse to use Python but it is a touch of the future and lots of possibilities for programmers and engineers from all sized businesses to use. When they opened the gates I was one of the lucky 10,000 to get in. So what did I do, I setup three apps before I even knew that was the limit.  Then I was stuck.  Well today you now have up to 10 apps that you can run on appspot or your own domain. Make sure to update your SDK.

Next question is, when are they going to launch this out of beta?  I want to start using it for business.

We’re happy to announce we’ve released some small updates to Google App Engine. Among the more significant changes:

• More apps: Want to create more than 3 applications with your App Engine account? Now you can now create up to 10!
• Time windows for Dashboard graphs: Zoom in on the data in your dashboard to get a more accurate picture of whats going on. You can zoom in to see graphs for the last 24, 12, and 6 hour periods.
• Logs export: You can now use appcfg.py to download your application’s logs in plaintext format. Use appcfg.py –help for more information on how to download your logs.
• Send email as logged in user: If you’re using the users API, you can now send email from the email address of the currently-logged-in user.

Be sure to update your SDK and check the release notes for a full list of changes. Have more changes you’d like to see with App Engine? Let us know in our Google Group!

The models and entities framework for Google Apps is pretty fun. It is very similar to django models and ruby on rails but it is even more simplified. I have been playing with Google App Engine since it came out (was in first 10,000 yay!) and it is really fun. Prototypes have never been so rapid. I wish we got more than three apps to create, I have had to repurpose a few. I have lots of ideas I will be posting here and howtos.

To create a model:

class Person(db.Model):
  first_name = db.StringProperty()
  last_name = db.StringProperty()
  hobbies = db.StringListProperty()
 
p = Person(first_name="Albert", last_name="Johnson")
p.hobbies = ["chess", "travel"]
 
p.put() # creates/updates model and inserts data

To create an Expando model
Expando models are fun because they are dynamic. You can add properties to the classes on the fly and it expands automatically.

class Person(db.Expando):
  first_name = db.StringProperty()
  last_name = db.StringProperty()
  hobbies = db.StringListProperty()
 
p = Person(first_name="Albert", last_name="Johnson")
p.hobbies = ["chess", "travel"]
 
p.chess_elo_rating = 1350
 
p.travel_countries_visited = ["Spain", "Italy", "USA", "Brazil"]
p.travel_trip_count = 13
 
p.put() # creates/updates model and inserts data

Prototyping is extremely fast with Google App Engine. Python of course is always extremely fun to do. The winds are a changin’.

[ google app engine entities docs for the DatastoreAPI ]