Google AppEngine - Maven POM

Google have standardised java hosting and deployment with the release of a scalable, standards based java hosting platform. PHP had this 14 years ago and its about time.

The first question is how do I take advantage?

1. After studying the terms of service it seems as though you do not cede intellectual property rights and that it is quite suitable for commercial use where you would normally use a public hosting solution. (You would obviously not store financial transactions in the cloud and you would not store medical or any data that has legal restrictions on where the data may physically reside) and who may look at it.)

2. I still have to determine the confirm BigTable reliability: Will it ever loose data?

3. The Maven POM - What is the difference between the SDK and the real environment.

Investigation

I provide a maven POM that describes the Java Google App-Engine capabilities based upon the classes available to a deployed application. To determine the classes available, I generated a list of all classes included in the SDK and executed Class.forName(String) within a test application that I deployed to Google App Engine.

The results were interesting and are the foundation of the POM that is provided below.

Repositories

From a maven perspective there are only two significant libraries within the SDK that must be installed into your local repository because the can be obtained publicly.

From the root of the SDK execute the following maven commands:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=lib/shared/appengine-local-runtime-shared.jar -DgroupId=com.google -DartifactId=appengine-local-runtime-shared -Dversion=1.2.0 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=lib/shared/jsp/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar -DgroupId=com.google -DartifactId=commons-logging-repackage -Dversion=1.1.1 -Dpackaging=jar -DgeneratePom=true

I have the following two repositories specified in my maven settings.

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>datanucleus</id>
            <name>Datanucleus Repository</name>
            <url>http://www.datanucleus.org/downloads/maven2</url>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>atlassian</id>
            <name>Atlassian Repository</name>
            <url>https://maven.atlassian.com/repository/centralmirror</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

Maven: Provided POM

The following POM describes the libraries for the "provided" maven scope. Google seem to have an API proxy for their data layer and I have not included those libraries in my analysis. I will provide a more comprehensive POM once I understand the technologies and the dependencies.

For now, this is the pom that best describes the "provided" scope:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">

    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>tim.app.test</groupId>
    <artifactId>TestLab</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <name>Test Lab</name>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google</groupId>
            <artifactId>appengine-local-runtime-shared</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-logging-repackage</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.1</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

        <!-- the following are available on repositories -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>commons-codec</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-codec</artifactId>
            <version>1.3</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.specs</groupId>
            <artifactId>geronimo-jsp_2.1_spec</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.1</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.specs</groupId>
            <artifactId>geronimo-servlet_2.5_spec</artifactId>
            <version>1.2</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>ant</groupId>
            <artifactId>ant</artifactId>
            <version>1.6.5</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>ant</groupId>
            <artifactId>ant-launcher</artifactId>
            <version>1.6.5</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>commons-el</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-el</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>tomcat</groupId>
            <artifactId>jasper-compiler</artifactId>
            <version>5.0.28</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>tomcat</groupId>
            <artifactId>jasper-runtime</artifactId>
            <version>5.0.28</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>jstl</groupId>
            <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.2</version>
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>taglibs</groupId>
            <artifactId>standard</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.2</version>
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>        
    </dependencies>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>datanucleus</id>
            <name>Datanucleus Repository</name>
            <url>http://www.datanucleus.org/downloads/maven2</url>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>atlassian</id>
            <name>Atlassian Repository</name>
            <url>https://maven.atlassian.com/repository/centralmirror</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.6</source>
                    <target>1.6</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Ant: Launch and Deploy

The following build.xml file can be used to launch the local GAE development server and it may also be used to publish the latest version to the production GAE server.

Run the deploy from the commandline at least once as you have to put in your username and password.

<project name="Google App Engine">

    <target name="deploy">

        <java   fork="true"

        dir="c:/development/lib/appengine-java-sdk-1.2.0"
        classpath="C:/Development/lib/appengine-java-sdk-1.2.0/lib/appengine-tools-api.jar"
        classname="com.google.appengine.tools.admin.AppCfg">

        <arg value="update"/>
        <arg value="C:\Development\General\TimAppTestlab\target\TestLab-1.0.0"/>

        </java>
    </target>

    <target name="launch">

        <java
        fork="true"
        dir="c:/development/lib/appengine-java-sdk-1.2.0"
        classpath="C:/Development/lib/appengine-java-sdk-1.2.0/lib/appengine-tools-api.jar"
        classname="com.google.appengine.tools.KickStart">
            
        <arg value="com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain"/>
        <arg value="C:\Development\General\TimAppTestlab\target\TestLab-1.0.0"/>

        </java>
    </target>

</project>

Enjoy,

-Tim