Google AppEngine

Google App Engine is Google's cloud hosting service. GAE provides a Java runtime environment and a Python runtime environment. The environment is restricted in its access to networking and the Python internals for obvious security and abuse-of-service reasons. It also enforces quotas on bandwidth, CPU time, files and a bunch of other variables which Google bills by, but provides enough of these resources to be able to set up a reasonable web application for free.

No you're not locked in, but there is a large wall to climb in order to leave. Interestingly access to SQL databases is one of the Enterprise features promised for later this year.

Docs

Development

To run the local development app server dev_appserver.py

To upload to GAE appcfg.py

Domain Name

Apps can be hosted either under Google's appspot.com domain (e.g. world-of-beer.appspot.com), or on your own domain (e.g. beer.dazed.co.nz). To use your own domain, you must register it with GoogleApps (yet another service to sign up for). You don't so much add a domain to your app, as add the app to your domain.

World of Beer

World of Beer is my little AppEngine application. It is basically a site to review different beers from around the world.

• Dashboard

• Local Development Console

Built with WTForms, Mako, GoogleMaps.