“Google App Engine: To Django or to webapp?” Revisted
Since then, I've re-evaluated my decision and, a few weeks ago, I ported the Singularity web app to Django from webapp.
Here are the main factors that contributed to my decision:
- I wanted to use features in the latest Django trunk (0.97+) and the Google App Engine SDK ships with 0.96. I also did not want to be tied in to updates from Google for the Django framework.
- Google released the Google App Engine Helper for Django which makes it very simple to set of a GAE Django app.
- And, finally, looking through the source of Rietveld, I saw that Guido van Rossum is using Django for his Google App Engine app. And heck, I think he knows a thing or two that I may not.
Going with Django means that you can take advantage of more existing functionality (Django middleware, etc.) and, should you want to move away from Google App Engine in the future, there will be less code to rewrite. (Though, realistically, if you're doing anything with data, you're pretty much tied in to the DataStore at the moment until there is a suitable, scalable alternative that you can port to without completely refactoring your data layer.)
So my new take on this is that it makes a lot of sense to build Google App Engine applications using Django instead of pure webapp.
To get started, check out the Google App Engine Helper for Django.
The “Google App Engine: To Django or to webapp?” Revisted article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Tom Offermann
You made the right decision. I was at Google IO this week where Guido gave an hour long presentation about how to set up and utilize Django 0.97 on Google App Engine. In the Q&A that followed, I asked him if there was any reason to use the built-in webapp framework instead of Django, and he said that webapp was much simpler and easier to get started with, but that Django was much more powerful. In a later “Fireside Chat”, he added that they will not be adding any more features to or actively developing the webapp framework.
Given that, I think it’s clear that the vast majority of App Engine development will happen with Django.
I wrote up my notes from the App Engine sessions at Google IO here: http://offermann.us/2008/05/29/day-one-at-google-io/
May 30th, 2008 at 10:47 pmAral
Hi Tom,
Thanks so much for reporting in — happy to know I made the right decision!
And thanks also for the session notes.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:18 pmCharlie
Heh, I was next in line at the mike when Guido stopped taking questions! Ah well. I have some notes posted from App Engine-related sessions, although very raw notes, and not that particular session. Trying to get a handle on how to get all this set up correctly…
June 4th, 2008 at 4:15 amNoah Gift
Hi,
I am currently in the middle of writing a book on Google App Engine, was at the Google I/O question, asked Guido in the Fireside chat about support for 3rd party components such as Django, and interpreted things in a different way.
I think the webapp framework IS the best approach at this moment. The real beautify of Python web development is the WSGI standard. There are many wonderful things happening with WSGI and the webapp framework currently supports WSGI fully unlike the current trunk version of Django. If you want to use Django components then it might make more sense to use the current django templates and URL dispatch that come with the webapp framework. In reality, webapp is a forked version of Django with support for WSGI, due to the brilliant work of Ian Bicking: http://ianbicking.com.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:18 amAral
Hi Noah,
I’d love to hear more about the book you’re writing. If you need a tech reviewer, etc., give me a ping — I’m interested!
It is interesting the Guido is using Django himself for Rietveld.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:26 pmjorge
Well you got a point with trunk, there is no real reason to use 0.96 for new projects.
The helper is indeed a very nice tool, although it still makes you learn django (if you haven’t)
As for Guido, we all know he has a think for django.
One point against django that you forgot is that it’s made as a monolithic component, so ones you start using parts of it things get nasty, for example take a look at how much trouble the appengine people had to go thru to be able to use django-templates in webapp. Just read the module docstring of google_appengine/google/appengine/ext/webapp/template.py
That said I totally agree on the wsgi comment from Noah. In fact I can tell you that I’m using pylons on appengine, but the core is webapp and I don’t have pylons installed on that virtualenv
July 29th, 2008 at 5:50 am