PHP app on App Engine moved from Standard to Flexible without my input

[Jeff Bull]

I've been pulling my hair out since last Thursday, trying to understand how I broke my (so far very simple) PHP app. I discovered today that last Thursday it somehow got moved from a Standard environment to a Flexible one. I'm fairly new to GAE, so I cannot rule out the possibility that I've done something wrong here, but I certainly did not intend to make this move, and I'm pretty sure I didn't do it.

Regardless of how it happened, my app now fails every time. I get the 307 header followed by 404.

Is there a way to move this app back to the standard environment? I can't find that option anywhere in the UI.

Has anyone else experienced something getting moved without their input? 

Thanks,

Jeff Bull

[Alex (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi Jeff,

As a first step, make sure that your app.yaml file in your project directory looks like here and does not specify a variable [env: flex] as in this flexible environment example. Then, try redeploying the app by running the “gcloud app deploy” command from within the same directory on your local machine. Let me know if the app is back to the standard environment.

As stated here, the App Engine Flexible Environment is currently in Beta, is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and the implementation may change, possibly in backward-incompatible ways. It is not recommended for production use and so would explain why your app broke. You may also be interested in these quickstarts for PHP, where relevant information (as suitable PHP versions for each environments) is provided.

Cheers!

Alex

[Jeff Bull]

Hi Alex:

Thank you for responding. I'm sorry to say that your response wasn't particularly helpful. I spent several days combing through documentation (including all the links you sent me), without any success. I have checked my app.yam multiple timesl, and it looks like the example, and I've tried redeploying the app more than 10 times.

The main complaint I have is that I did not (knowingly) do anything to move my app from Standard to Flexible. Nor have I been able to move it back to Standard. I even created a new project to start over from scratch, and that one somehow was set to use Flexible without me ever seeing an option to choose.

So, yes, I know Flexible is not what I want. What I really want is help figuring out why my environment is stuck as Flexible and how to get it back to Standard. I don't feel like that question has been answered yet.

I'm on the verge of giving up and moving to a different vendor.

Regards,

Jeff

[Alex (Cloud Platform Support)]

Sorry to hear that my previous answer did not help much in making your app deploy to the right environment. Before proceeding any further, I will need you to provide the following information to investigate your issue further and understand what caused the switch in environments:

   - Your app.yaml file attached to your response (Make sure to remove any private information).

   - The version of the PHP running on your machine.

   - The exact command you run to deploy your app.

   - The version of your Cloud SDK (By running “gcloud -v” command).

On my side, I was able to deploy this Hello World quickstart to the standard environment at the moment without making any changes to it. As part of my system, I use PHP version 5.6.24 and the latest Cloud SDK version 138.0.0 (2016/12/14).

Lastly, note that this type of question is more appropriate for Stack Overflow which we regularly monitor as other types of stack exchange services and which would increase your chances to get a faster answer due to its larger audience.   

Regards,

Alex