Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

Webapps with Python and Google App Engine

Webapps with Python and Google App Engine

Iowa Code Camp - Fall 2011

Juan Gomez

March 29, 2012
Tweet

More Decks by Juan Gomez

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. Building webapps for the Cloud with Python and Google App

    Engine Juan Gomez PythonKC Co-founder October 29th, 2011
  2. Agenda 1. Intro to Google App Engine (GAE for short)

    • Brief intro to Python • Structure of a Python webapp • Setting up your dev environment with GAE • App Engine Architecture • The App Engine datastore and GQL 2. Brief intro to Django • Using templates with GAE 3. Quick demo of a sample webapp 4. Beyond the basics • Scalability & Security • Quotas • Using the Google Data Services API 5. Summary • Where to go from here? • References 2
  3. 7 1. Scalable Serving Infrastructure 2. Python Runtime 3. Software

    Development Kit 4. Web based Admin Console 5. Datastore
  4. 12

  5. 13

  6. A Python Code Sample x = 34 - 23 #

    A comment. y = “Hello” # Another one. z = 3.45 if z is not 3.46 or y is “Hello”: x = x + 1 y = y + “ World” # String concat. print x print y 14
  7. Enough to Understand the Code • First assignment to a

    variable creates it • Assignment is = and comparison is == (or is) • For numbers + - * / % are as expected • Special use: • + for string concatenation • % for string formatting (as in C’s printf) • Logical operators are words (and, or, not) not symbols (&&, ||, !). • The basic printing command is print 15
  8. Comments • Start comments with #, rest of line is

    ignored • Can include a “documentation string” as the first line of a new function or class you define • Development environments, debugger, and other tools use it: it’s good style to include one def my_function(x, y): “““This is the docstring. This function does blah blah blah.””” # The code would go here... 16
  9. Python and Types • Everything is an object! • “Dynamic

    Typing”-> Data types determined automatically. • “Strong Typing” -> Enforces them after it figures them out. x = “the answer is ” # Decides x is string. y = 23 # Decides y is integer. print x + y # Python will complain about this. 17
  10. Basic Datatypes • Integers (default for numbers) •z = 5

    / 2 # Answer 2, integer division • Floats •x = 3.456 • Strings • Can use “” or ‘’ to specify with “abc” == ‘abc’ • Unmatched can occur within the string: “matt’s” • Use triple double-quotes for multi-line strings or strings that contain both ‘ and “ inside of them: “““a‘b“c””” 18
  11. Whitespace Whitespace is meaningful in Python: especially indentation and placement

    of newlines •Use a newline to end a line of code Use \ when must go to next line prematurely •No braces {} to mark blocks of code, use consistent indentation instead • First line with less indentation is outside of the block • First line with more indentation starts a nested block •Colons start of a new block in many constructs, e.g. function definitions, then clauses 19
  12. Assignment •You can assign to multiple names at the same

    time >>> x, y = 2, 3 >>> x 2 >>> y 3 This makes it easy to swap values >>> x, y = y, x •Assignments can be chained >>> a = b = x = 2 20
  13. A Python Code Sample x = 34 - 23 #

    A comment. y = “Hello” # Another one. z = 3.45 if z is not 3.46 or y is “Hello”: x = x + 1 y = y + “ World” # String concat. print x print y 21
  14. Side by Side with Java 22 Java (C#) Python public

    class Employee { private String myEmployeeName; private int myTaxDeductions = 1; private String myMaritalStatus = "single"; public Employee(String EmployeName) { this(EmployeName, 1); } public Employee(String EmployeName, int taxDeductions) { this(EmployeName, taxDeductions, "single"); } public Employee(String EmployeName, int taxDeductions, String maritalStatus) { this.myEmployeeName = EmployeName; this.myTaxDeductions = taxDeductions; this.myMaritalStatus = maritalStatus; } } class Employee(): def __init__(self, employeeName , taxDeductions=1 , maritalStatus="single" ): self.employeeName = employeeName self.taxDeductions = taxDeductions self.maritalStatus = maritalStatus
  15. Things to read through: The Quick Python Book, 2nd Ed

    http://amzn.to/lXKzH5 “Learn Python The Hard Way” http://learnpythonthehardway.org 24 Python 101 – Beginning Python http://www.rexx.com/~dkuhlman/python_101/python_101.html
  16. Things to refer to: The Python Standard Library by Example

    http://amzn.to/sx3It1 Programming Python, 4th Ed http://amzn.to/kWjaW2 25 The Official Python Tutorial http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html The Python Quick Reference http://rgruet.free.fr/PQR2.3.html
  17. 26

  18. • App Engine handles HTTP(S) requests, nothing else – Think

    RPC: request in, processing, response out – Works well for the web and AJAX; also for other services • App configuration is dead simple – No performance tuning needed • Everything is built to scale – “infinite” number of apps, requests/sec, storage capacity – APIs are simple, stupid App Engine Does One Thing Well 28
  19. And that allows it to: • Serve static files •

    Serve dynamic requests • Store data • Call web services • Authenticate against Google’s user database • Send e-mail, process images, use memcache 29
  20. Scaling • 5 million page views a month at the

    free quota • Low-usage apps: many apps per physical host • High-usage apps: multiple physical hosts per app • Stateless APIs are trivial to replicate • Memcache is trivial to shard • Datastore built on top of Bigtable; designed to scale well – Abstraction on top of Bigtable – API influenced by scalability • No joins • Recommendations: denormalize schema; precompute joins 30
  21. Python webapps • App Engine includes a simple web application

    framework called webapp. • webapp is a WSGI-compatible framework. • You can use webapp or any other WSGI framework with GAE (like web.py, CherryPy, Tornado, Django) • Basic apps need Config file + webapp CGI 31
  22. Config file (No XML!) • A webapp specifies runtime configuration,

    including versions and URLs, in a file named app.yaml. application: myapp version: 1 runtime: python api_version: 1 handlers: - url: /admin/.* script: admin.py login: admin - url: /index\.html script: home.py - url: /(.*\.(gif|png|jpg)) static_files: static/\1 upload: static/(.*\.(gif|png|jpg)) 32
  23. Structure of a Python webapp from google.appengine.ext import webapp from

    google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app class MainPage(webapp.RequestHandler): def get(self): self.response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'text/plain' self.response.out.write('Hello, webapp World!') application = webapp.WSGIApplication([('/', MainPage)], debug=True) def main(): run_wsgi_app(application) if __name__ == "__main__": main() 33
  24. Setting up your dev environment with GAE • The dev

    environment is really, really nice • Download the (open source) SDK – http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html – Google_App_Engine_SDK_for_Python • a full simulation of the App Engine environment • dev_appserver.py myapp for a local webserver • appcfg.py update myapp to deploy to the cloud • You get a GUI on OS X and Windows. 34
  25. App Engine Architecture 35 Python VM process stdlib app memcache

    datastore mail images urlfech stateful APIs stateless APIs R/O FS req/resp
  26. The Datastore • Based on “BigTable” • Schemaless • Scales

    infinitely • NoSQL, with SQL type queries (GQL) – No joins (they do have “reference fields”) – No aggregate queries - not even count()! – Hierarchy affects sharding and transactions – All queries must run against an existing index • Maybe the best part of App Engine! 36
  27. Hierarchical Datastore • Entities have a Kind, a Key, and

    Properties – Entity -> Record -> Python dict -> Python class instance – Key -> structured foreign key; includes Kind – Kind -> Table -> Python class – Property -> Column or Field; has a type • Dynamically typed: Property types are recorded per Entity • Key has either id or name – the id is auto-assigned; alternatively, the name is set by app – A key can be a path including the parent key, and so on • Paths define entity groups which limit transactions – A transaction locks the root entity (parentless ancestor key) 37
  28. Creating an Entity in the Datastore from google.appengine.ext import db

    ... class FoursquareUser(db.Model): """Creation of an entity of the kind 'FoursquareUser'""" created = db.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True) name = db.TextProperty() email = db.TextProperty() description = db.StringProperty(multiline=True) 38
  29. GQL • GQL is a SQL-like language for retrieving entities

    or keys from the datastore. • GQL's features are different from a query language for a traditional relational database. • GQL syntax is (very) similar to that of SQL • SELECT [* | __key__] FROM <kind> [WHERE <condition> [AND <condition> ...]] [ORDER BY <property> [ASC | DESC] [, <property> [ASC | DESC] ...]] [LIMIT [<offset>,]<count>] [OFFSET <offset>] <condition> := <property> {< | <= | > | >= | = | != } <value> <condition> := <property> IN <list> <condition> := ANCESTOR IS <entity or key> 39
  30. Querying my FoursquareUser Entity from google.appengine.ext import db ... #

    I can query the datastore using the Query API query = db.Query(FoursquareUser) # Or the methods inherited form db.Model model_query = FoursquareUser.all() # Or using GQL GQL_query = db.GqlQuery("SELECT * FROM FoursquareUser") # I can print the results to the HTTP response object for user in query: self.response.out.write("User name: %s" % user["name"]) self.response.out.write("User email: %s" % user["email"]) 40
  31. Creating the Views • HTML embedded in code is messy

    and difficult to maintain. • It's better to use a templating system. – HTML is kept in a separate files with special syntax to indicate where the data from the application appears in the view. • There are many templating systems for Python: EZT, Cheetah, ClearSilver, Quixote, and Django are just a few. • You can use your template engine of choice by bundling it with your application code. • Or you can use Django out of the box! 41
  32. Why use Django over webapp? • Django templating is one

    of the best in its class • Django has easy cookies and custom 500 errors • Django is less verbose • Django middleware is really handy • URL patterns – mapping between URL patterns (RegEx) to callback functions (views). – URLconf 43
  33. Using templates with GAE from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.http

    import HttpResponse def hello(request): return HttpResponse("Hello, World!") urlpatterns = patterns('', ('^$', hello),) # You have to write even less code! 44
  34. Automatic Scaling to Application Needs • You don’t need to

    configure your resource needs • One CPU can handle many requests per second • Apps are hashed (really mapped) onto CPUs: – One process per app, many apps per CPU – Creating a new process is a matter of cloning a generic “model” process and then loading the application code (in fact the clones are pre-created and sit in a queue) – The process hangs around to handle more requests (reuse) – Eventually old processes are killed (recycle) • Busy apps (many QPS) get assigned to multiple CPUs – This automatically adapts to the need • as long as CPUs are available 46
  35. Security • Prevent the bad guys from breaking (into) your

    app • Constrain direct OS functionality – no processes, threads, dynamic library loading (use Task Queue) – no sockets (use urlfetch API) – can’t write files (use datastore) – disallow unsafe Python extensions (e.g. ctypes) • Limit resource usage – Limit 10,000 files per app, adding up to 32 MB – Hard time limit of 60 seconds per request – Daily Max of 6.50 CPU hours (CPU cycles on 1.2 GHz Intel x86) – Hard limit of 32 MB on request and response size, API call size, etc. – Quota system for number of requests, API calls, emails sent, etc 47
  36. Preserving Fairness Through Quotas • Everything an app does is

    limited by quotas. • If you run out of quota that particular operation is blocked • Free quotas are tuned so that a well-written app (light CPU/datastore use) can survive a moderate “slashdotting” • The point of quotas is to be able to support a very large number of small apps. • Large apps need raised quotas ($$$) 48
  37. Using the Google Data Service API import gdata.docs.service # Create

    a client class which will make HTTP requests with # Google Docs server. client = gdata.docs.service.DocsService() # Authenticate using your Google Docs email address and # password. client.ClientLogin('[email protected]', 'password') # Query the server for an Atom feed containing a list of your # documents. documents_feed = client.GetDocumentListFeed() # Loop through the feed and extract each document entry. for document_entry in documents_feed.entry: # Display the title of the document on the command line. print document_entry.title.text 52
  38. What about vendor Lock-in? • Use Django-nonrel – independent branch

    of Django that adds NoSQL database support to the ORM http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/projects/django- nonrel – No JOINs! :-( • Port existing Django projects with very few changes! • Switch from Bigtable to other NoSQL DBs – MongoDB, SimpleDB. (soon Cassandra, CouchDB) • Move freely between Django hosting providers – ep.io, gondor.io, Heroku or your own VPS 54
  39. Where to go from here? •Learn Python! •Download the App

    Engine SDK •Build Apps...Many Apps •Learn Django! (is awesome) •Join a local Python User Group – http://www.pyowa.org or @pyowa on Twitter. – http://pythonkc.com/ or @pythonkc on Twitter. 55
  40. Resources • Read the Articles on the Google App Engine

    site. – http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/ – http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/overview.html – http://appengine-cookbook.appspot.com/ • Keep up with new releases through the Blog – http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/ • Read the source code from the SDK – http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/ – Maybe you will find an undocumented API. 56