Is there an online IDE for Google App Engine?

Question

I am learning Google App Engine / Python and I love it. Unfortunately I am not allowed to use my own computer in the office and not allowed to install anything on the corporate machine.

It would be so great to have an online IDE for Google App Engine where I could play with my Python code using any browser, including the one on my iPad.

Maybe http://www.devunity.com/ will be an online IDE for GAE some day. Do you know any existing way to program GAE in a browser?

Answer 1

There are two GAE Dev Environments that seem to work best IMHO. PyCharm can be configured to run/debug a GAE app by launching the dev_appserver.py from within. While PyCharm is definitely one of the nicest IDEs for Python the fact that that's all it does is a shame.

Personally (cringe if you want) the best for me and my students seems to still be Eclipse. Start with the latest Release (Oxygen.2) with either the Web Developer or PHP flavor from the installer. I then add WebClipse and PyDev from the Marketplace. No eclipse isn't the IDE that I think is "best"; however, it is a swiss army knife of IDEs and can do it all.

Choose the Python perspective after installation and create a new Project... (NOTE this is not a Python Project, rather a generic project) From the dialog choose the Python Google App Engine Project. Fill in the blanks (it will want you to identify where Python27 is and where google_appengine are located. The project can then be launched by right-clicking and selecting "debug GAE Project". It will auto start the dev_appserver, host your app at localhost:8080 and allow you all the native Python Debugging in Eclipse that PyDev can offer.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Google Cloud Shell provides you with command-line access to your cloud resources directly from your browser:
Introducing Google Cloud Shell’s new code editor

Answer 3

cloud-ide.com offers Exo IDE. This is a richly featured, cloud-based IDE that you use in the browser. Importantly for you, it supports the full cycle of deployment to various Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers, including Google App Engine!

I've used this before, and it's as simple as saying you want a new GAE project. You'll be redirected to Google pages when necessary to register details such as the app's name and domain. It even supports accessing GAE's log records for your app, although I've found this to be quite a bit slower than just using the Google-provided dashboard.

You can sign in with a Google account, and while I don't think that's necessary, I'd recommend it since this allows it to automatically associate the app you make with that account.

HTH

Answer 4

Found this question while I was looking for a similar solution. As mentioned by threed above, Cloud9 was demoing an integrated version with Goolge App Engine, which has been recently released: http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.ie/2016/01/Cloud9-IDE-now-supports-Google-Cloud-Platform.html

Your GCP-ready Cloud9 workspace comes preinstalled with the Cloud SDK and gcloud command line tool, and allows you to build and deploy your application to Google App Engine directly within the IDE. With Cloud9, you can edit your project’s code and push changes back to your cloud source repository. When you’re ready, build and deploy to App Engine directly from the IDE.

There's more information and a walkthrough on the Cloud9 for Google Cloud Platform tutorial here: https://docs.c9.io/v1.0/docs/google

Answer 5

Google Cloud Source Repositories provide an integrated source code editor for projects hosted on Google Cloud:

Answer 6

I feel this is better than all other online ides

codenvy.com

Answer 7

Cloud 9 IDE (c9.io). They are NOT yet integrated but supposedly will be soon. They demoed a beta version at Google I/O 2011, but it hasn't been released to the public yet.

Answer 8

Looks like there's no real online solution at the moment. I still think that it would be great to share simple examples and test out bugs without having to register a new application yourself.

However, it turns out to be quite comfortable to access my home computer via my 3G iPad using the Screens VNC app through an SSH tunnel. I set the computer's screen resolution to 1024×768 and I can quite comfortably use it to try out things when I have some free time. Not perfect because full keyboard support is missing but very powerful and usable.

Answer 9

For now and probably for quite some time you won't be able to edit your app directly on an app engine account (as @Wobble notes: the file system on the instances are indeed read-only, for good reasons that hardly will change). Things like Py I/O or similar are also to limited, as you note yourself.

To get forward you minimally want a file system that you can write to, preferably a machine that also will run the development server for you. Rent space on some VPS provider (e.g. gandi.net, http://www.gandi.net/hosting/), then you can mount your VPS home directory onto an office machine and create your app at the VPS, then deploy from it. It certainly won't be an IDE, you need to use (/learn) how to handle the system mainly through the command line, but it will be something. And as an added bonus, you could try non GAE python stuff on it (Turbo Gears, twisted stuff, your choice of fancy database etc)

Answer 10

One option is to use web2py. All of the files in a web2py project can be edited by the framework's own web-based editor. A fairly good overview of how this works, and some of the features of the site is available on this video:

http://vimeo.com/13485916

Answer 11

Py I/O: not quite a full IDE, but more like a console where you can try out some of your Python code. And it is written and running on GAE.

I don't think there is a full online IDE out there at the moment that will allow you to write a full GAE/Python project.