Using BlobReader, wildcard subdomains and webapp2
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under app-engine, python, coding, blobstore, blobreader, webapp2
Today we'll demonstrate a number of new features and libraries in App Engine, using a simple demo app. First and foremost, we'll be demonstrating BlobReader, which lets you read Blobstore blobs just as you would a local file, but we'll also be trying out two other shinies: Wildcard subdomains, which allow users to access your app as anything.yourapp.appspot.com (and now, anything.yourapp.com), and Moraes' excellent new webapp2 library, a drop-in replacement for the webapp framework.
Moraes has built webapp2 to be as compatible with the existing webapp framework as possible, while improving a number of things. Improvements include an enhanced response object (based on the one in webob), better routing support, support for 'status code exceptions', and URL generation support. While the app we're writing doesn't require any of these, per-se, it's a good opportunity to give webapp2 a test drive and see how it performs.
But what are we writing, you ask? Well, to show off just how useful BlobReader is, I wanted something that demonstrates how you can use it practically anywhere you can use a 'real' file object - such as using it to read zip files from ...
Implementing a dropbox service with the Blobstore API (part 3): Multiple upload support
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under app-engine, python, coding, blobstore, filehangar, cookbook
In the last part of this series, we demonstrated how to use plupload, a Javascript library with multiple backends for handling file uploads. The solution we demonstrated there only supported uploading a single file at a time, however, and required us to improvise our own progress indicators - far from optimal.
So now, the post you've all been waiting for, where we demonstrate how to do multiple file upload!
The basic trick is simple: Hook the event that's triggered before a file is uploaded, and update the URL to upload to when it's called. That way, ever uploaded file gets a new URL. Where do we get the URL from? We simply ask the server for one. Here's the Javascript for that:
uploader.bind('UploadFile', function(up, file) {
$.ajax({
url: '/generate_upload_url',
async: false,
success: function(data) {
up.settings.url = data;
},
});
Straightforward, right? The only subtlety here is that we have to make the request an asynchronous one, so that the uploading doesn't start until we've updated the URL. Here's the server-side code that generates those URLs:
class GenerateUploadUrlHandler(BaseHandler):
@util.login_required
def get(self):
self.response.headers['Content-Type'] = 'text/plain'
self.response.out.write ...
Implementing a dropbox service with the Blobstore API (part 2)
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under python, app-engine, blobstore, datastore, filehangar
In part 1 of this series, we demonstrated what's necessary to build a very basic 'dropbox' type service for App Engine. Today, we're going to enhance that by adding support for 'rich' upload controls.
Various types of rich upload controls have sprung up in recent years in order to work around the weaknesses of the HTML standard file input element, which only allows selection of one file at a time, and doesn't support any form of progress notification. The most common widgets are written in Flash, but there are a variety of solutions available. With the ongoing browser adoption of HTML5, additional options are opening up, too!
Today we're going to use an excellent component called Plupload. Plupload consists of a Javascript component with a set of interchangeable backends. Backends include Flash, HTML5, Gears, old-fashioned HTML forms, and more. When you configure Plupload, you can specify which backends you want it to try, in which order, and it will stop when it finds one that works in the user's browser.
Different backends have different capabilities, and the ones you need will depend on your use-case. Check out the feature matrix on the Plupload homepage to ...
Implementing a dropbox service with the Blobstore API (Part 1)
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under python, app-engine, blobstore, datastore, filehangar
The blobstore api is a recent addition to the App Engine platform, and makes it possible to upload and serve large files (currently up to 50MB). It's also one of the most complex APIs to use, as it has several moving parts. This short series will demonstrate how to implement a dropbox type file hosting service on App Engine, using the Blobstore API. To start, we'll cover the basics needed to upload files, keep track of them in the datastore, and serve them back to users.
First up is the upload form. This step is fairly straightforward: We create a standard HTML form, only we generate the URL to post to by calling blobstore.create_upload_url, and passing it the URL of the handler we want called by it. Here's the handler code:
class FileUploadFormHandler(BaseHandler):
@util.login_required
def get(self):
self.render_template("upload.html", {
'form_url': blobstore.create_upload_url('/upload'),
'logout_url': users.create_logout_url('/'),
})
Standard stuff - though it's worth pointing out that, for convenience, we're using the login_required decorator from the google.appengine.ext.webapp.util package to require users to be logged in (and redirect them to the login form if they're not). And here's ...