I ran into a sneaky little bug when working locally with the Google App Engine Development Web Server and using the Mail API: sending email begins to fail if you change the source code of the class or module that contains the Mail API calls.

The actual error you get is: SystemErrorParent module 'email' not loaded.

The workaround is to import the python standard library email module explicitly when using the Mail API. So add the following to your scripts that use the Mail API:

import email

I've opened up issue ticket 182 to track this. Please star it so that it gets some attention.

The ticket contains a working copy of my Flash/PyAMF test that shows you how to use the Datastore API (gaepyamf2.zip; 728K) to add a simple profile to an application that uses the Google Accounts authentication system. I'm going to blog about that separately but you can get a sneak peek earlier if you like.

The Google App Engine Mail API Development Web Server bug and workaround article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.