Back to GAE after some years

[Roberto Martino]

Hi

Four years ago, I created a complete application using GAE. This appication is still in use.

I was very happy with GAE and now, getting back to GAE now, I expect the same experience, but it seems that many things are changed, also the documentation changed a lot.

I'm interested in using Python 3.x

I'd love if anyone can correct me if I'm wrong and answer my questions.

Database

- blobstore -> deprecated, not a problem I see the alternative

- datastore -> I enjoyed very much the philosophy behind Datastore and NDB.

    has NDB been substitued by Cloud Datastore Client Libraries or can I still use NDB or is there any other best practice?

Android and iPhone App

Push Notifications

-I used GCM for Android  Notifications and a custom python library for Apple notifications -> deprecated

   I understand that now I must use Firebase.

   Can I use Firebase only for the Push Notifications and keep using Datastore for the DB?

Mobile  comunication, this is an important point for me.

-I used Google Cloud Endpoints, very nice, very useful and fast for building mobile devices comunication

   Is this still the best way for mobile comunication?

   I red that it does not works with python 3.x, will it be ported shortly?

Thank you in advance

Roberto

[Giuliano Ribeiro]

Hi Roberto, welcome back to GAE!

I can give you my opinion for NDB part:

It's only supported on Python 2.7 runtime, not anymore on python 3, which is the AppEngine 2nd generation (using gVisor). 

As they want to have a "pure" runtime in the 2nd generation, it will not be ported. Recommended to use Datastore API.

Best regards,

[Katayoon (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi Roberto,

You can use Firebase for the Push Notifications and keep using Datastore by using Cloud Functions, since Firebase and GCP share Cloud Functions.

In this documentation, you may find the design patterns demonstrate different ways to use Cloud Platform to create backend services for Mobile Apps, and using Cloud Endpoints is one of the five approaches. As you mentioned The Endpoints Frameworks supports doesn't support Python 3.x. I should note that, here we can neither provide you any architectural recommendation nor any ETA or promise for Python 3.x support. However the Cloud Endpoints product team welcome all the feature requests and prioritize them based on their importance and the stars they have taken.

[Eric G]

Re. NDB, there is an open source library very similar to it, Python 3 compatible:  https://github.com/Bogdanp/anom-py.  I can't say I've used it, but I highly respect the author's other libraries. 

It includes transparent caching, though with GAE flex or standard Python3 you have to run your own memcache service.  See https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3/python-differences