App Inventor and App Engine

[Gary Frederick]

Howdy all

One of the arrows that got dropped when Google shut down the Labs was App Inventor http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/

One of the nifty things folks learned with App Inventor is how to use TinyWebDB, a component that gave us budding Android developers a web database. It was easy to learn and the examples used App Engine as the service. 

Can you run App Engine on your own server (still)?

  Will it be a bad idea?

and

Some of the folks getting up and connecting to GAE had a hard time, a few never got it to say 'hello world'.

I did my best to help the lost, if nothing else it kept most of them out of here.

Will there be some arrangement for those App Inventors when MIT takes over?

Gary 

[Wesley C (Google)]

hi gary,

glad to see that you're an App Inventor user! yes, Google has shut down Labs of which App Inventor was part of, however it has since found a new home at MIT:

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-mit-center-for-mobile-learning-with.html

you're correct in that TinyWebDB -- http://www.appinventorbeta.com/learn/reference/other/tinywebdb.html -- is a useful resource at providing a backend via App Engine for your App Inventor apps. this is not a new idea as many mobile (AI4A, standard Android, or iOS) app utilize App Engine in this way... one example is http://bit.ly/lft-aeb. many people have confused App Engine with hosting only web or user-facing apps, but gaming and mobile apps are valid use cases for the platform as well.

there are (at least) two ways to run App Engine apps, the development server runs locally on your box (for testing, development, staging, etc.), and the live production server(s) run in Google datacenters. you upload your app to Google, and your app is accessible (nearly) globally. "will it be a bad idea?" is a subjective question.

of course here at Google we don't believe so, but you may be expecting something else. i don't believe the generic appinvtinywebdb will be taken down (because it is an App Engine service, not part of App Inventor), but it's better if you run it yourself. you're not sharing with anyone and have control over the app.

users should be able to get Hello World working by following the online tutorials, available in Python, Java, or Go. it's true that the platform requires "real" coding as there isn't a builder interface like that of AI4A or similar tools like Scratch or Alice. in addition, our team travels around the world  -- http://code.google.com/team -- to give talks and hands-on tutorials on the platform to help them get up-to-speed and to further educate the world about our products.

hope this helps!

-wesley

--
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wesley.chun : wesc+api at google.com : @wescpy
developer relations :: google cloud products

[Gary Frederick]

:-)

On Thursday, September 1, 2011 5:53:56 PM UTC-5, Wesley C (Google) wrote:

hi gary,

glad to see that you're an App Inventor user! yes, Google has shut down Labs of which App Inventor was part of, however it has since found a new home at MIT:

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-mit-center-for-mobile-learning-with.html

We are all looking forward to the transition, most with fear

a few of us excited and seeing a bright future :-0

I am a moderator in the App Inventor forums (the loudest and the best looking ;-))

and I was hoping to let you here in Google App Engine land know we are still around by my post. I will report back that you still love us and the new pricing scheme will not cause issues for those that are learning and using twdb.

Those that are using it in apps that have traffic will have to look at their logs and see what the new pricing does to them.

 

you're correct in that TinyWebDB -- http://www.appinventorbeta.com/learn/reference/other/tinywebdb.html -- is a useful resource at providing a backend via App Engine for your App Inventor apps. this is not a new idea as many mobile (AI4A, standard Android, or iOS) app utilize App Engine in this way... one example is http://bit.ly/lft-aeb. many people have confused App Engine with hosting only web or user-facing apps, but gaming and mobile apps are valid use cases for the platform as well.

I really like App Engine. But that does not need to be more than mentioned in this post.

Well I can say that some of the new web components make App Engine even more attractive. But that also is not appropriate to this post.

 

there are (at least) two ways to run App Engine apps, the development server runs locally on your box (for testing, development, staging, etc.), and the live production server(s) run in Google datacenters. you upload your app to Google, and your app is accessible (nearly) globally. "will it be a bad idea?" is a subjective question.

So if someone sets up a development server and runs it locally and opens the url to the world

they have the same as far as running an app as if they ran on Google's datacenters???

There are some issues with testing on a development server with App Inventor. You can not easily hit the url unless you have the url publicly accessible, or so I was told.

And some may want to run their own App Inventor server once it is open source. If it uses App Engine and is expensive, they may want to run on a development server. Just thinking, we have not been told what will happen.

 

of course here at Google we don't believe so, but you may be expecting something else. i don't believe the generic appinvtinywebdb will be taken down (because it is an App Engine service, not part of App Inventor), but it's better if you run it yourself. you're not sharing with anyone and have control over the app.

That is the advise that we give, run it yourself.

 

users should be able to get Hello World working by following the online tutorials, available in Python, Java, or Go. it's true that the platform requires "real" coding as there isn't a builder interface like that of AI4A or similar tools like Scratch or Alice. in addition, our team travels around the world  -- http://code.google.com/team -- to give talks and hands-on tutorials on the platform to help them get up-to-speed and to further educate the world about our products.

Some still have problems getting Hello World working.

but we help them read the instructions

and make sure they actually have python installed

and actually deployed something

and the something is not the Hello World

well you know how it goes :-)

 

hope this helps!

-wesley

It did.

I'll let the App Inventor community know. Thanks!

Gary