Google-App-Engine-Django
One of the many frustrations with Google AppEngine is that although you can “just use Django”, there is really not much Django left to use. This means if you have an existing project that you’d like to port to AppEngine, at this point it is a lot of work. You can not use your models. You can not use generic views. Of course things like the Admin, databrowse, and fundamentally every third-party app is out of the question.
So naturally the first question everyone wants to know is when is there going to be some kind of AppEngine backend for Django. Although it seems like it’s just a matter of mapping things in the backend, something like this would actually be a lot of work. Google’s Query Language (GQL) doesn’t support joins and it has very limited query functionality, among other things.
So I was pleased to see that the developers at Google are working towards providing some kind of backend solution or mapping on top of Django models. It looks to be an interesting project, and I’m thankful for the ideas it helps provide to the Django-SQLAlchemy project. At this point it is just getting started, but it is interesting nonetheless. (Plus, there’s some pretty heavyweight names on there.) I’ll be keeping a watchful eye on it.
Discussion
9 Apr 08
Mike Axiak says:
Nice find. I’m glad to see they’re working on something. Although all there tests seem to imply that the model definitions still need to change… I’m hoping that this is just an intermediary step.
9 Apr 08
Empty says:
Mike: Yeah I agree. My guess is they are not going to do full mapping, but hopefully they will. Congratulations on the new website, it looks great.
9 Apr 08
Siddhi says:
Yeah can’t wait for an Appengine backend. Virtually none of the contrib & third party stuff works without Model support. Even sessions support is out.
9 Apr 08
Jiri Barton says:
I’m sorry I’m going to sound grouchy here but it seems to me everyone is just too afraid to say Google AppEngine support for Django plainly sucks. It is so lame that it doesn’t even seem to be Django anymore. Everyone would reject a hosting like this – weren’t for the fact it is Google. Should you really spend the time to add up to the already enormous Google empire? To invest in something Google might never give you back? I really hate to see all you guys shifting your effort to a corporate dream cloud. Django is so good now; it could be better even still. Do not go too wide and stay focused. For rms’ sake please.
I apologize for the rant.
9 Apr 08
Chris Hoeppner says:
@Jiri:
I see it like this (as I’ve just a moment ago stated on django-users): Hosting django reliably has always been a pain, imho, ymmv. If we get around to make django work with datastore, that’s great. Host Django? Free for most of us? Google integration right there? Yay!
@Empty:
Marvelous sight there. I’ll keep an eye out there for that kind of things, and from now on, on your blog too.