Tom Walder | @tom_walder Google App Engine - a PHP PaaS from Prototyping to Production 

Tom Walder CTO at Docnet+Venditan in Manchester, UK PHP, E-commerce (a developer at heart) Open source, App Engine @tom_walder docnet.nu | venditan.com Compulsory (old) Holiday Photo 

I am going to talk about… • What I have learned using Google App Engine from Prototyping to Production • What is a PaaS, Google App Engine? • Who uses it, where is the value? • Feature overview • Some key features in more detail • Challenges, pit falls • Scaling & performance • Live scaling demo* • What’s next for App Engine? 

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A full stack application What might a traditional full stack application look like? 

A full stack application Application server (PHP) Database server (MySQL) Load Balancers Memcached Server/Daemon Your Code Deploy tool (e.g. Capistrano) Provision (e.g. Puppet) Hardware (or VMs) Apache/nginx Security, users, patching Firewall logrotate Monitoring Centralised logging crontab Queue system (Rabbit?) Search (Elastic/Solr/etc.) 

A PaaS application? Your Code 

With a PaaS… • You write code, deploy applications • Without researching, selecting, provisioning, maintaining, supporting or updating the infrastructure • You have to work with some (pretty acceptable) limitations 

App Engine - PaaS by Google • Around since 2008 • Your Code runs in containers • Google servers, data centres (EU/US) • PHP, Python, Java, Go (Standard runtimes) 

App Engine - PaaS by Google • Worthwhile FREE tier • Documentation • Support (community & paid) • PAYG above free tier • SLA 

Big Names • Sony Music • Best Buy • Snapchat • Rovio (Angry Birds) • Khan Academy https://cloud.google.com/customers/ 

Where’s the value? “If we didn't have App Engine, we'd be spending a lot more time figuring out server setup and working on routers” Khan Academy “Developing apps on App Engine takes one-fourth to one-tenth of the resources and one-fourth of the time compared to building something ourselves” Best Buy “App Engine allows us to launch games very quickly with teams of one or two developers. Because Google manages all the servers, there is little required of us in terms of maintenance” Rovio “It's hard to imagine that this app would have been possible, so quickly, working with anything except App Engine” Sony 

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What is Google App Engine? • Hosting Platform (in Google’s cloud) • Removes (DevOps) headaches • Makes scaling trivial • Prototype/alpha/beta/production • Helps you develop applications faster 

Some of what you get • Memcache • Cron jobs • Task queues • Load balancing • Auto-scaling • Versions • Traffic splitting • Services (was modules) • HTTP/2 • 28 instance hours FREE • Cloud console • IAM 

Memcache $memcache = new Memcache; return $memcache->get(‘key’); • No connection details needed (IP/port) • Magic RPC (Protocol Buffers) • make_call() 

Cron jobs cron: - description: summary job url: /tasks/summary schedule: every 5 minutes • cron.yaml • HTTP GET 

Task queues (new PushTask( ‘/some/worker', ['payload' => ‘data'] ))->add(); • Magic RPC (Protocol Buffers) • HTTP POST • Named Queues, Delays, Processing Rates 

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Cloud Console 

More of what you get • Geo location headers • Centralised logging • Inbound email (POST) • Traces • Local development SDK • Custom domains • SNI SSL • User authentication • GCS stream handler • Free private git • Security Scanner • Decent documentation 

Geo headers 

Traces 

Traces 

User authentication - url: .*
 script: main.php
 login: required
 secure: always • Any Google Account (or Admin only) • $_SERVER 

And more… • Datastore (NoSQL) https://github.com/tomwalder/php-gds • Full text search https://github.com/tomwalder/php-appengine-search 

Challenges • Read-only file system • PHP 5.5 (Standard Runtime) • MySQL costs money • PHP extensions limited • Gone in 60 seconds 

Scaling & Performance Options • Instance types - RAM, CPU • Idle instances • Scaling configurations • Auto, Basic, Manual • Rules, latencies etc. 

Scaling Demo application: conf-demo
 version: alpha1
 runtime: php55
 api_version: 1
 threadsafe: yes
 
 handlers:
 
 - url: .*
 script: main.php app.yaml /request.json‘, false, stream_context_create([ 'http' => [
 'method' => 'PUT',
 'header' => 'Content-type: application/json',
 'content' => json_encode($_SERVER)
 ]]) ); main.php 

Live Demo* 

Pit falls Avoid vendor lock-in Inject your dependencies 

Summary 

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What’s next for App Engine? • Flexible Runtimes • in BETA • Runs Docker images • So ANYTHING you want • Including PHP 7 

Questions? 

Google App Engine - a PHP PaaS from Prototyping to Production • Feedback IPC app or https://joind.in/talk/ce88a • Projects https://github.com/tomwalder • Twitter @tom_walder • Email [email protected] • Thanks to IPC for having me and to Docnet/Venditan for letting me out! • Slides here: *RECURSION*