problems with google app engine

if you’re just getting started with app engine, you’ll encounter limitations, some more debilitating than others. i’ll keep a list of those i encounter.

1. currently, you can’t import urllib2. you’re limited to using urlfetch. urlfetch is decent, but you’d have to re-write/tweak parts of existing libraries that use the ubiquitious urllib2. for example, say goodbye to using the Universal Feed Parser without significant hacking. in the interim, i’m able to use a slightly hacked copy of BeautifulSoup to suck down a feed and parse it out. (2008-07-02, see issue 61)
2. if your requests are running for a while, you’ll get an google3.apphosting.runtime.DeadlineExceededError exception. this isn’t anything new in the world of the internet, but app engine seems to be a little less lenient in allowing slower code. i think this is a good thing, overall, because it forces you to make web apps that aren’t sucky. (2008-07-03)
3. difficult to get sane URLs if you’re referring to a single object because str(db.Model.key()) is so awfully long. i actually want some kind of short-ish id with which to build permalinks. but, now, that’s yet *another* thing i have to write code for. how annoying. (2005-07-04)
4. i can’t use db.ReferenceProperty() with one of my custom classes. I have to db.ReferenceProperty(db.Key), which is ok. but gross. (2008-07-05)
5. the handlers are pretty basic. maybe that’s good. but i find myself having to decorate handlers with richer functionality so i can write more succint higher-level code. (2008-07-05)
6. python. i find it limiting in comparison to ruby. maybe i’m still a bit green with it.