Cloud Datastore Client Libraries

[George Bittmann]

https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/reference/libraries

Does anyone know if this is supported on app engine? I'm curious if we can use this with Php on app engine standard.

[Marcel Manz]

I had opened following feature request back in 2013, requesting direct Datastore access from GAE PHP, which was flagged 'Started' back in January 2014, but no progress since:

https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=9931

I'm not sure will this ever going to be provided by Google, or the new Cloud Datastore Client Libraries are the way to go? Would be nice if Google could comment on this.

In my eyes these new libraries should work from anywhere (including PHP on app engine standard), as they simply communicate with Google's API backend.

In regard to my feature request I'm curious to know what latency can be expected by using the new client libraries, opposed to a native implementation. Also, since these new libraries have the beta label, does this beta label only apply to the library itself or also to the API endpoint, or is that already GA and covered by SLA?

Thanks

[Alex (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi there,

I can confirm that the Cloud Datastore Client Library is supported on the standard App Engine environment. It is possible to test it by following the Quickstart for PHP App Engine Standard Environment tutorial and including the provided code from your referenced Get Started page.

Make sure to install the client library using composer and note that the PHP application will only connect to the Cloud Datastore when the code is deployed to App Engine. In order to test it locally, you will need to use the Datastore Emulator and make sure to specify the appropriate port as described here under “Using the Datastore Emulator”. Lastly, this is a Beta release of the Cloud Client Libraries for the Google Cloud Datastore API. These libraries might be changed in backward-incompatible ways and are not subject to any SLA or deprecation policy.

Regarding the additional questions about a direct access to Cloud Datastore, these libraries may in fact serve as a good alternative whenever they will come out of Beta. As to the Beta label itself, the Google Cloud Datastore API was made GA as of August 16th 2016.