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Show off your App Engine apps  (View post)

sanderqd [PersonRank 1]

Sunday, April 13, 2008
16 years ago13,406 views

I was wondering whether any of you is already developing an application using Google App Engine.

Mine is Noto (http://noto.appspot.com/), a very simple notebook app. I intend to add some features like search, while keeping the interface as clean as possible. (Only tested in Firefox 3 yet, so it might look bad in your browser.)

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Signing in through Google is really cool. I wasn't going to bother to register, but when I only had to type my Google Account password it was so easy.

Of course I checked for "https: //www.google.com/...", but not everyone will do this. I wonder how long before we see appspot apps phishing for Google logins.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I started a chat program just for sample purposes, GAE works really nicely. I also wrote a mailer program that accepts GET parameters to send a mail (it needs to be authenticated with a key parameter as it will send mails via my Gmail account) – the reason was that my 1and1 server can send mail but they mostly get rejected by popular mail programs like Yahoo or Hotmail. Sending them via GAE on the other hand works well (for up to 2000 mails, according to Google's free quota limitations).

One thing I haven't tried yet is to have another domain show for the app, as appspot.com isn't good for something real. As soon as they offer a more final, paid version I wanted to try this for something real perhaps.

Yoshiomi Kurisu [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

My app is Color(http://color.appspot.com).
Using this app ,you can record colors.
It is interesting to see the public colors(posted any users) (http://color.appspot.com/public) and click the "Calculate average of public color" link the page background color changes the average of public color.

Above 4 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Jorge Oliveira [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Well, I've created http://i-want.php.appspot.com/ :)
WHile I like python, I think php support is a must for a community view point .

Scott Moonen [PersonRank 2]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]sanderqd, how do you plan to implement searching? I couldn't find text search capability for text fields in the model documentation. And GQL doesn't even have a 'LIKE' keyword. This is a serious weakness in GApps in my view. It's also a bit odd, given that text search is one of Google's key strengths.

Scott Moonen [PersonRank 2]

16 years ago #

H'm, I found the use of a search in this article, whose name and primary purpose doesn't even relate to searching:

http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/bulkload.html

But I can't find any documentation of the google.appengine.ext.search module. Getting warmer...

sanderqd [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

Nice, the module exists indeed. The documentation isn't online yet, but the source file is documented well: google/appengine/ext/search/__init__.py. Though it reads:

"Don't expect too much. First, there's no ranking, which is a killer drawback.
There's also no exact phrase match, substring match, boolean operators, stemming, or other common full text search features. Finally, support for stop words (common words that are not indexed) is currently limited to English."

For my Noto app, I'm probably going to implement some sort of incremental search using JavaScript, as there's only one relatively small file to search in.

Chris Riley [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

In terms of implementing LIKE, you first need to understand how GQL and BigTable work, because it is very different to any DB we're used to. On the queries and indexes page http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/datastore/queriesandindexes.html they explain it, but the basic premise is that any filter you put in your GQL, when scanning the index it will return the first occurance of a result that matches that filter, and then will scan down that index returning each result until a result no longer satisfies the filter condition. (Note, it doesn't continue trying to find further results as the index has them ordered, this is key.)

So then consider this GQL query, looking for people with a name begining "Chri":

query = "Chri"
db.GQL(SELECT * FROM people WHERE name >= :1 AND name <= :2, query, query+"z")

This is pretty much the same as name LIKE 'Chri%' becuase as the index is ordered, as soon as it hits "Chriz" as a name the following entry will no longer match the filter and you force BigTable to drop out of the index.

Anyway, this is a simplifed example taken from this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/ce823913d3af6e09/4660c8bb253037f6?lnk=gst&q=LIKE#4660c8bb253037f6

and Google themselves show this technique in the docs, see the tip in the Introducing Indexes section:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/datastore/queriesandindexes.html#Introducing_Indexes

Duncan Booth [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

You can get the embedded documentation with pydoc:

   cd C:Program FilesGooglegoogle_appenginegoogle

   python25libpydoc.py google.appengine.ext.search

or equivalent on Linux.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

[put at-character here]Jorge: > While I like python, I think php support is a must for
[put at-character here]Jorge: > a community view point

Google has already said that they are likely to roll out other languages. PHP and Java are obvious candidates.

But be careful what you ask for, in case you get it. Google is a Python shop. I have a feeling that the best support, the latest and best APIs, the best performance, the fastest response to problems, etc are going to be for Python.

PHP and Python are conceptually similar enough that a developer proficient in one can easily learn the other.

I'm using PHP for my current real-world work, but if I was developing for Google App Engine I would switch to Python for sure.

Gert Jan van Halem [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

I've created an application called "Rate my site" (http://ratemysite-gjvh.appspot.com)that allows you to vote for a site. The most popular will be on top. You can also add your site and find out how popular it is. I've created this as a test for appengine and I really learned to like appengine. The datastore API is really cool.

Peter Svensson [PersonRank 1]

16 years ago #

I'm making a just-for-fun hexagonal boardgame in JavaScript (Dojo) using movable counters. It looks better then it sounds :)

At the moment I only use the python backend for proxying the request to generate dynamic counters from the counter-generating server.

http://psvensson08.appspot.com/static/index.html

Cheers,
PS

Inferno [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I learned python in 6 hours:-) what i learned is here http://hashnaught.appspot.com ... It is not even 1% good but i am trying to make something like digg. The upload was just a sample. I have already designed a new theme. Much cleaner. In the current release you can post and read a post only:-(

Sam [PersonRank 3]

16 years ago #

This isn't a full application, but it is a tutorial on how to integrate Yahoo! Pipes and GAE:

http://www.javarants.com/2008/04/13/using-google-app-engine-to-extend-yahoo-pipes/

Chris Anderson [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

I created an alternate App Engine host at http://appdrop.com

Please test your apps there as well.

Thanks!

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

Chris is too modest. This is, clearly, a bigger deal than it sounds. As long as it doesn't evolve (degenerate?) into a Better Appmousetrap, that is ;-))

http://waxy.org/random/images/weblog/appdrop_appengine_ec2-20080414-133001.jpg

(this mashup-"logo" sucks)

Exclusive: Google App Engine ported to Amazon's EC2
Posted Apr 14, 2008

One of the biggest criticisms of Google's App Engine have been cries of lock-in, that the applications developed for the platform won't be portable to any other service. This weekend, Chris Anderson, the Portland-based cofounder of the Grabb.it MP3 blog service, just released AppDrop — an elegant hack proving that's not true. [...]

http://waxy.org/2008/04/exclusive_google_app_engine_ported_to_amazons_ec2/

Andrew Hitchcock [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

I created a BigTable Web Service. You can read the announcement here:

http://andrewhitchcock.org/?post=304

or access it here:

http://bigtable.appspot.com/

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

16 years ago #

All dandy except the app is misnamed. Judging by your own description "... now you can have simulated BigTable running atop App Engine, which itself provides an abstraction on top of the real BigTable," this app ought to be called

http://anAbstractionTooFar.appspot.com

[ It's not too late to put some oomph! into the name!]

Still, a nice write-up on BigTable from 2005... lots more is known about it by now, but this one is pretty concise

http://andrewhitchcock.org/?post=214

David Webb [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

My first app is a Pi calculator – http://pi.appspot.com/

I know it's not really technically that great, but I though it would be cool to try calculating Pi on Google's servers, I've wanted to that for a long time, and I thought this was finally a chance to do it! :)

I had never used Python before this, but got this app up in 30 minutes, learning Python as I went. I think that's pretty good! ;)

Alex Martin [PersonRank 0]

16 years ago #

My first google app is PookWall – www.pookwall.com or http://pookwall.appspot.com.

It is just a generic purpose billboard where you can publish whetever you want, from simple ad up to feelings, ideas, jokes(?).

It is (of course) in first beta phase, and i whish to keep improving it following the mantra "eat my own dog food" ;) and the users comments.

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