Karmona Pragmatic Blog

“You can always start a weekend experiment but you can never know how it will end”  (Moti Karmona, 2008 ;)

I was very curios and wanted to take the GAE for a quick test drive but the Google documentation have few inaccuracies and isn’t sufficient if it is your first Python encounter so I lost three hours of precious beauty sleep and compiled this blog-post-capsule for future generations.

How to setup your development environment to work with Google-App-Engine 

• Get yourself a GAE Account  
• Install Google App Engine SDK, Python and Eclipse.
• Install the PyDev Eclipse extension
  • Help –> Software Updates –> Available Software –> Add the http://pydev.sourceforge.net/updates site –> Install it –> Restart Eclipse
  • Configure Eclipse to use the Python interpreter by navigating to Window –> Preferences –> PyDev –> Interpreter –> Python –> New and select the location of python.exe on your system
• Create your first project
  • File –> New –> PyDev project and click next –> Name your project and make sure Python 2.5 is selected.  
  • Add necessary App Engine libraries to your project | Right click your Project folder –> Properties –> PyDev – PythonPath (see image below)
    • C:\Program Files\Google\google_appengine
    • C:\Program Files\Google\google_appengine\lib\django
    • C:\Program Files\Google\google_appengine\lib\webob
    • C:\Program Files\Google\google_appengine\lib\yaml\lib

• Create your project files (e.g. GAE examples)
  • app.yaml  
  • Your first python file 
• Test your Local application
  • Update your Run configuration (see image below)
    • Change the Main Module field to C:\Program Files\Google\google appengine\dev_appserver.py
    • On the Arguments tab, type in “${project_loc}/src” 
    • Name this configuration and click apply and click run.
  • Open http://localhost:8080 with your browser and enojoy your stupid app :)

• Upload your code to Google App Engine
  • Open a command prompt and navigate to your application directory.
  • Type appcfg.py –email=yourgmailaccount@gmail.com update src\ 
  • To publish code within Eclipse, open Run –> Run configurations and make a copy of your previous run configuration.  Change the Main Module to appcfg.py, and change the argument tab to –email=yourgmailaccount@gmail.com update “${project_loc}/src”
  • Your code is now live! Test it by going to http://yourapp.appspot.com

Enjoy :)

P.S. More about the framework in future posts.