Django and More on Google App Engine with App Engine Patch

I’ve recently had the chance to play with Waldemar Kornewald’s “Google App Engine Patch” and have come away very impressed. All LittleShoot Google App Engine (GAE) projects now run on it for a couple of simple reasons:

1. Seamless Django integration (including 1.0.1)
2. Thorough documentation
3. Healthy open source development community with an excellent steward in Kornewald and frequent new releases

The Django integration got me first. Almost everything works, such as manage.py, Django authentication, Django testing (the original reason I switched), etc. There are also lots of other goodies in there, like support for boto’s SQS module. If you’re unfamiliar with it, boto SQS allows you to call Amazon’s Simple Queue Service (SQS) from Python. That’s a huge step in getting around GAE’s limitation on longer lived, CPU-intensive tasks. Just queue it up in SQS, and your GAE app will keep humming along fine — cloud integration at its finest.

To get started with App Engine Patch, download the zip file from the home page and work off the sample project. The download includes App Engine Patch itself as well as the sample project.  

With Django App Engine Helper not supporting Django 1.0 and seemingly inactive, App Engine Patch is a godsend and gets a huge thumbs up.

Great work Waldemar, and don’t forget to donate.