Google App Engine in 2016

[Silvan Spross]

Hi everybody

Does anyone use Google App Engine to run a "real" Django application? I want to give Google App Engine a try. I don't want to use Google Container Engine or Google App Engine Managed VM for now. I consider them as another option if using plain Google App Engine does not work out.

My goals are:

1. Separated Environments
   Development, Stage and Production (where stage and production can be just different app engine projects and so can be considered as "the same").
   
   
2. Using Task Queue (instead of Celery)
   Used for async tasks and scheduled ones (cronjob).
   
   
3. Using Memcache (instead of Redis)
   For caching keys up to caching templates etc.
   
   
4. Using Cloud Storage (Buckets) as Storage backend
   For media files.
   
   
5. Using CloudSQL (instead of Postgres)
   I don't care about nonrel for the moment. Using Datastore should be a future goal here.

My subject is all about how to setup and separate environments (1). But if someone has feedback or input about another goal, why e.g. not to use it, I'm very happy to hear! Btw. my test project is much alike https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-django-skeleton for now.

What bugs me at the moment:

• Load different settings e.g. database based on 
  os.getenv('SERVER_SOFTWARE', '').startswith('Google App Engine')

  Is this best practice?
  
  
• I run my application local with:
  source env/bin/activate

  dev_appserver.py app.yaml
  to have python libraries that use C extensions loaded locally (like mysql) and that
  google.appengine

  is available. But how can I run django management commands locally? Whats best practice here?
  
  
• And the biggest one: Whats best practice to migrate production database? I heard stuff about interacting with the database through a separate GCE instance running scripts. Or is there no best practice because with Datastore "you don't need" migrations ;)

I would be very happy about some tipps pointing me to the right direction. Thank you!

Silvan

[Tim Graham]

Djangae is a database backend for App Engine that's under active development: https://github.com/potatolondon/djangae

[Silvan Spross]

yes thx, I did take a look at it. the sandbox stuff looks interesting for my current problem, but the hole project seems a little bloated, no offence! maybe I'll be able to contribute, after I unterstand, whats should go on here.