Thanks for your thoughts. After spending a few hours last night exploring their API, it does seem that there are so many similarities with Django that even if you use webapp alone you're still using Django's templates and a model system very close to it (although it would seem that relationships between objects are handled a wee bit differently, I guess due to the datastore not being relational).
I guess that makes my question slightly redundant ;-) but it also raises the question: does using Django only give you a more organised framework in which to work while most of the core features, such as data models and templating, are already available in webapp in an almost identical form? I guess, not having that much experience with Django (have written 2 sites with it), it's not clear how much I'm missing out on if I just choose to use webapp alone. It seems to offer a more compact API but it's limitations are difficult to assess without going ahead and building an entire project with it. P. David Wilson wrote: > Hi Padraig, > > Based on my own experiences the platform is at a level of maturity > just below my tolerance threshold. As examples, getting large amounts > of data into the system is currently quite difficult, partially to do > with limits on request size (I'm sure I read this somewhere but can't > find it now), and execution time placed on scripts. > > I tried building a simplistic OPML application using AppEngine, that > given an URL like: > > http://some-app.blogspot.com/http://some.url/my.opml > > Would produce something like planetplanet.org's output. This seemed > like a perfect little demonstration application (combining bits of the > web, chunks of XML, and generating a single HTML page), except the > only URL fetching capability in AppEngine is limited to a single > request at a time, and apparently counts towards the execution time of > the request that caused the fetch. > > So even for the simplest application I could think of, taking my OPML > file of around 400 feeds, and generating a Planet style output, would > likely have required all kinds of hacks that made the web browser > refresh the page until all the feeds had been downloaded (which would > have taken a very, very long time if fetched one at a time). > > > As for frameworks, you can't really avoid using the AppEngine > framework. I didn't get around to using Django but it should be pretty > much the same as using it in a normal application. The only thing that > changes (as I understand it) is the base class used when defining your > models/. > > > That experience, and going by today's news of a datastore bug causing > a large proportion of AppEngine requests to fail, I'm personally > leaving AppEngine alone for 6 months or so until the really rough bits > have been fixed. > > Otherwise, it looks like an amazing platform. It's just pretty limited > right now. (Something like a parallel HTTP fetch API or background > processing will probably arrive sooner rather than later. It's a > rather gaping hole in the featureset). > > > David > > On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 3:41 PM, Padraig Kitterick > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I'm starting to develop an app on Google app engine which is essentially >> like del.icio.us but for other kinds of information useful to academics. >> Nothing too complicated but I'd be really interested to hear what people >> have to say about the best way to approach a new Google app when >> starting from scratch. Is it preferable to use Django over Google's >> basic webapp framework? Is this only really useful if you have Django >> experience, or is webapp very limited in comparison? I tried watching >> Guido's presentation on Django with app engine but got the impression >> that it's still pretty hacky to use, and I'm not clear how the Django >> system ties in with using google accounts, etc. Anyone have positive >> experiences with this? >> >> Padraig >> > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Python Ireland" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.ie/group/pythonireland?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
