A great idea strikes you. An idea for an interactive web app that could serve millions. But, how do you implement it? Where do you start? You’ve got some coding experience, some developer friends, and a revolutionary idea.
But — you don’t have any servers to host the application, any framework to build custom code upon, or an infrastructure to house it. What do you do? Buy these things outright?
Rent to Own
Why buy when you can rent — rent all the server space you want from Google through the cloud. Rent APIs from them to create custom code. Build on a flexible, scalable platform without any virtual server maintenance. Just queue up Google Cloud Platform’s App Engine and get to coding.
Wait — you’ll need a few pointers before diving in. You may feel eager to jump right in, but take a moment to read over the basics:
What is Google App Engine?
Google App Engine is, in the simplest terms, a web application hosting service. A web application is any software that you use through the web like Gmail.
Platform as a Service: Explained
This means developers can just worry about developing their product instead of building an infrastructure. Officially, Google App Engine is a Platform as a Service (PaaS). Google App Engine is more or less designed to host applications with many users accessing the app at the same time.
What can you do with Google App Engine?
With Google App Engine, you can build highly scalable applications on a fully managed serverless platform. This means that you can build and deploy your web apps and have them automatically scale to your needs. There’s no need to create virtual machines, allocate machine resources, or manage the infrastructure your application is built on.
How does Google App Engine work?
An App Engine app receives and responds to web requests. Those web requests start firing off when a client opens up their web browser and types in your app’s url. The client contacts the app through the HTTP address, fetching the web page at the url. Google App Engine takes the request then gets together the machine resources to handle the incoming request. App Engine queues up the servers that will help it deliver the web app the fastest way possible. App Engine requests are “sandboxed” so responses can happen rapidly.
How do you store data?
In order for you web application to be useful, you’ll need some way of storing and retrieving data. The easiest way to do this is through a database of some kind. Cloud Datastore is the easiest way to use a flexible database without using SQL.
Cloud Datastore vs Cloud SQL
There are also relational databases you can use for the App Engine app (called Google Cloud SQL) is you desire to have a join-query relational database. It’s fully featured but much harder to configure and maintain. If you’re planning on creating a standard web app, Cloud datastore probably will work for you. That datastore will interact as a service to both GCP and the web app you create through an API that manages all your web app’s needs as it scales.
Libraries to Help Build Your Code
In addition to App Engine itself, Google has a great deal of tools and libraries for developing software applications on the App Engine platform. This means you’ll have access to SDKs for development, built-in browser shell, and a suite of free-to-use Google APIs for various programmatic needs.
Conclusion
Google App Engine is about helping developers simply add their code and go. No need to become well-versed in the best practices for allocating memory for virtual machines. Instead, you can simply care about the details of your app — not the server it’s running on. Security, storing data, and scaling are managed for you by Google App Engine.
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About the Author
Anthony Coggine is a HR professional turned business analyst. He has spent more than 5 years as a recruitment consultant in a variety of industries, primarily focused on consumer technology and research. You may connect with him on Twitter.
