Google App Engine - a PHP PaaS from Prototyping to Production

App Engine is a container-based, auto-scaling hosting environment (PaaS really), running PHP.

It let’s you get off the ground quickly, for FREE - then grow to a much, much larger scale with little or no effort.

It went “Generally Available” in 2015, so has both free and commercial support from Google.

I'll talk about Scaling and Performance options for your application. What’s free and what’s not, Data storage, Databases, Background processing, Task queues, Crons, Memcache, Full text search, communication in & out of App Engine, Community & Commercial support and Deployments. Maybe a bit on modules and how to use the Google-provided SDK to build and develop locally.

I’ll try and point out some of the pitfalls too.

You should leave the talk knowing if App Engine is likely to help you save time and money or add something useful to your already bulging toolkit!

Transcript

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

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2. 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
   

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3. 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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5. A full stack application
   What might a traditional
   full stack application look like?
   

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6. 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.)
   

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7. A PaaS application?
   Your Code
   

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8. 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
   

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9. 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)
   

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

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

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12. 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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14. 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
    

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15. 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
    

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

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

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

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20. Cloud Console
    

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21. 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
    

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22. Geo headers
    

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23. Traces
    

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24. Traces
    

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25. User authentication
    - url: .*

    script: main.php

    login: required

    secure: always
    • Any Google Account (or Admin only)
    • $_SERVER
    

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

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

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

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29. Scaling Demo
    application: conf-demo

    version: alpha1

    runtime: php55

    api_version: 1

    threadsafe: yes

    

    handlers:

    

    - url: .*

    script: main.php
    app.yaml
    file_get_contents(
    ‘https://firebase..//request.json‘,
    false,
    stream_context_create([
    'http' => [

    'method' => 'PUT',

    'header' => 'Content-type: application/json',

    'content' => json_encode($_SERVER)

    ]])
    );
    main.php
    

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30. Live Demo*
    

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31. Pit falls
    Avoid vendor lock-in
    Inject your
    dependencies
    

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32. Summary
    

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

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35. Questions?
    

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36. 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 tom@docnet.nu
    • Thanks to IPC for having me and to
    Docnet/Venditan for letting me out!
    • Slides here: *RECURSION*
    

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