Level 5
So no one uses Google App Engine?
Jul 8, 2016
4
Level 5
Google App Engine
Greetings
This is a very open ended discussion but I was wondering what the community thought of Google App Engine and Google Data Store. On the plus side it seems really good, fully managed, auto scaling, pci compliant etc. On the down side it seems like hardly anyone is using it for PHP/Laravel projects. Although Google provide an SDK for PHP developers most of their documentation is Python and Java so are we barking up the wrong tree considering this for Laravel projects?
For example Monolog is one of the most popular logging libraries and it supports dozens of databases and logging platforms from MySQL, AWS, Mongo and even Mail Chimp and the like. However there is no Google Data Store out of the box. It isn't difficult to make it work it just seems "odd" that it isn't supported.
Another major oddity or "feature" depending on your point of view is that GAE has no file system. So various things such compiling blade templates needs some consideration. There is a package on Github (https://github.com/shpasser/GaeSupportL5) but it doesn't seem to have a huge amount of commits and that makes me a little nervous.
The SDK is also very basic and provides a rather odd development environment. Running on windows it has it's own web server, mem cache and Data Store noSQL database but it seems to be nothing more than a Python script and it doesn't have hardly any settings. Deploying code appears to be a drag and drop process, literally like ftp'ing files, no push to deploy like Laravel Forge.
Does anyone use GAE/Data Store for Laravel projects and if so what are your thoughts and what challenges have you overcome. Would you recommend it others? Are they're any alternatives that people recommend.
Level 7
I have. For a Python application.
- I enjoyed working with the APIs.
- It manages the scalability of the app entirely on its own and is seriously good at that.
- App Engine provides almost no network/OS/VM level control.
- Datastore is a columnar database so you'd have to do some thinking about whether it suits your particular needs or not.
My suggestion: Unless you're expecting very (very!) high volumes of concurrent traffic, the development overhead overshadows all the potential benefits.
1 like
Level 5
@usama.ashraf Thanks for the reply that's interesting. Is this the "development overhead" reason there is so little support and guidance on using PHP/Laravel with Google App Engine. Have other people looked into Google's product and decided it is overkill for the "average website"?
Is it really designed for the "average" website or is it more aimed at mobile apps/games or as you say sites with very high traffic or viral traffic that might be extremely high one day and lower the next?
Level 7
I don't think you'll be able to use Laravel. There're probably PHP APIs that App Engine offers. Integrating those with Laravel might not be a pretty picture.
App Engine is used for server-side applications, a game would not be a good idea. Nor would software requiring a lot of low-level control.
Another point I should've mentioned is that one of the great utilities of App Engine is that one application can seamlessly serve many front-ends: desktops, browsers, mobile apps etc. This is thanks to Google Cloud Endpoints.
Using it for the "average website" would definitely be a waste of time and resources IMO.
It scales up and down automatically according to the current load, so yeah fluctuating traffic with a high peak is what it's made for.
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