By default, specific versions of an App Engine app are routed by URLs like https://[VERSION_ID]-dot-[SERVICE_ID]-dot-[MY_PROJECT_ID].appspot.com.
Is there any way to have something similar with a custom domain?
I currently have a subdomain mapping for my app configured with a CNAME DNS record pointing to ghs.googlehosted.com (my "naked" domain is not served by App Engine). This allows serving the default version of my app from that subdomain, but I also want to be able to test new versions of the app using my domain (for various reasons such as sharing cookies, etc.)
For example, let's say my domain is typeracer.com and my custom domain mapping in App Engine is data.typeracer.com: I want to be able to access a specific version of my app at a URL like https://[VERSION_ID].data.typeracer.com. Is there any way to do this?
I've looked at the App Engine docs for adding wildcard subdomain mappings and using a dispatch.yaml. However, it looks like that would work only for routing specific services, but not specific versions of the app.
No, what you ask for exactly is not possible as the mapping is a (sub)domain per GAE service one, you cannot select a certain version of a service in the custom domain settings screen.
Sounds like may be attempting to implement different environments (say staging) based on service versions, which has some disadvantage, see Continuous integration/deployment/delivery on Google App Engine, too risky?
If so you can try to implement them using different services instead, which:
would allow you to map one (sub)domain per environment
you'd avoid all drawbacks mentioned in the above-mentioned Q&A
The domain naming scheme you mentioned suggests variable nesting levels, which in itself can be problematic, see Sub domain not listed in Google App Engine while enabling SSL for custom domains. Maybe try something like https://data-[VERSION_ID].typeracer.com instead of https://[VERSION_ID].data.typeracer.com?
Related
Whiles playing around with GAE custom domain setup in hopes of building a multi-tenant application. I noticed that wildcard sub domains don't quit work as documented.
for example, if one configures domain *.dev.example.com *.qa.example.com you would expect dev.example.com to automatically serve default services deployed in appengine, I however noticed that recently I would have to explicitly enter default.dev.example.com. This however is not what has been documented.
Anyone understands why this is now the case? the domains are verified with DNS configuration on Google DNS service. All works as expected, meaning that I can reach all other services on domain, but default service is not automatically been served.
After various attempts, I eventually purchased some Google support time. And the solution to this is that you need to create and map both a wildcard domain and naked domain. Therefore, one will need to have both
*.dev.example.com and dev.example.com
This is of course tedious, the good news is that Google is running alpha testing on API that allows domain mapping to happen automatically, register at here
Soon multi tenancy application deployments will require no manual intervention.
Problem I want to solve
I want to be able to send different users to different versions of my Google App Engine application, on a custom domain, with SSL enabled. This needs to be done in a controlled way, i.e., even landing page should be different, and it has to work on multiple units for the user.
Solution I can't get to work
I am trying to setup a custom domain with sub-domains, and want to be able to access different versions of the application. For example, I have myapp.mydomain.com, and I want to run one version (alpha) on alpha.myapp.mydomain.com, and one version (beta) on beta.myapp.mydomain.com (where alpha is default).
I use the Google Developers Console to set up custom domains, using myapp.mydomain.com, and *.myapp.mydomain.com as custom domains.
This works perfectly as long as I don't try to add on SSL as well, i.e., beta.myapp.mydomain.com serves the version named beta. When I set up SSL I start by adding my application to Google Apps, (per https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/ssl) and then set up my domain to point to my app. First I add myapp.mydomain.com, then alpha.myapp.mydomain.com, and last beta.myapp.mydomain.com.
When that is done beta.myapp.mydomain.com start to serve the default version instead. Except that it sometimes also serves the beta version (this happens one in every 20 tries or so, I assume it's a glitch for now).
My questions:
a) Should I set up my domains in both Google Apps and Google Developer Console? Or should I remove the setup from Google Developer Console? I tried both, seems to give the same results.
b) It seems like it is possible to get it done by using modules as indicated in
Google App Engine custom domains, subdomains and SSL and in Appengine modules dispatch.xml routing with custom domain. Is this the only way, or am I doing something wrong in my setup?
Suggestions I have received so far
One suggestion is to use traffic splitting and set a unique cookie depending on what version I want the user to end up with. I did not know about this, and it will solve some other issues I have been looking at. It does not solve my current problem though, as I need to have this set before log in. The answer is useful though.
I'll answer with what I did to make this work for me.
Instead of sending users to different versions of the app, I created a new module called alpha, and directed users using alpha.myapp.mydomain.com to that module using dispatch.xml.
<dispatch>
<url>*alpha.myapp.mydomain.com/*</url>
<module>alpha</module>
</dispatch>
I set up custom domains in the App Engine Console (https://console.developers.google.com) under Compute->App Engine->Custom Domains, for *.myapp.mydomain.com and alpha.myapp.mydomain.com. I also added the URL alpha.myapp.mydomain.com to the accepted URLs for my App Engine app on Google Apps (https://admin.google.com). This allowed me to run over SSL as well.
I intend to run the app under another domain (domain alias to my primary domain), so I tried that as well. To make this work I ONLY added the domain alias in Google Apps as www.mydomainalias.com and alpha.mydomainalias.com, because if I added it to Google App Engine custom domains I got an error message ("We are unable to process your request at this time. Please try again later. (Error #1000)"). I have no idea why it that did not work out.
The easier approach is to do traffic splitting on a cookie level compared to setting up extra subdomains AND extra SSL certificates.
The domain name to access your alpha version does not have to change using this approach.
from the docs :
The response from your app does not already contain a Set-Cookie:
GOOGAPPUID=... header. This allows your app to control which version a
user gets.
I have built an flask app hosted in App Engine, have used wildcard subdomain mapping along with namespace support provided App Engine so that app will be served from any subdomain. Its all working fine.
Now, I want to make one of the subdomain, say admin.domain.com to handle some admin related activities. All other subdomain points to normal app.
When un-registered user visits company.domain.com, it should be redirected to admin.domain.com where he will register, once done he will go back automatically to company.domain.com.
How to map a admin app to particular subdomain? Is there anyway to do it using Flask or App Engine? If not possible, how to handle this scenario?
This is the first time I am building such a app.
Thanks..
I'm not sure about the semantics when you use the word 'app'. In strict GAE sense, an apps are completely separate, each with its own billing and datastore etc.
If you strictly want to have the admin app as a separate app, you can't use the wildcard subdomain mapping. You'd have to manually map each subdomain using the App Engine admin settings for mapping domains. You can map the admin.domain.com to your admin app, and manually map your other subdomains to the normal app.
If you're just talking about separate admin functionality that runs in the same app, and you're not strictly set on using admin.domain.com, the best way is probably to use the new modules functionality and create your 'admin' as a separate module and use dispatch.yaml to route to it:
https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/modules/routing
Otherwise, Flask/GAE doesn't really provide any built in mechanism for this. You'd have to do something messy like check the URL in every request handler and act appropriately if it's admin.
I hear that now we can do wildcard subdomains on google app engine (I haven't tried it myself, but I believe that's been a new feature added), but can we have a domain point to it?
So
new.example.com (works?)
newexample.com -> new.example.com (does this work? where newexample.com is acting as new.example.com)
The way I envision newexample.com, this would work as
newexample.com/blog in the url, but app engine would support it as new.example.com/blog
I guess I am trying to emphasize that I am NOT looking for domain fowarding where newexample.com just forwards users to new.example.com
Thanks!
UPDATE: To clarify, I wasn't meaning naked domain, but a url like this
www.newexample.com/blog can work as new.example.com/blog or perhaps even more clearly, new.example.appspot.com/blog
Yes you just have to use an asterix *.example.com when setting up your custom domain in google apps.
To serve your app on all subdomains within a given higher-level subdomain, you can use wildcard subdomain mapping: enter an asterisk in place of the lowest-level name. For example, entering * will cause your app to be served on all subdomains within your registered domain.
See Custom domains
*.yourappid.appspot.com domains work by default.
You can add your app to as many different Google Apps accounts (so can use multiple domains), but you can not use domain alias' within Google Apps, as only the primary domain from a google apps account is used.
Applications that use Google App Engine are not available for users at non-primary domains.
See Limitations for multiple domains
If the question is:
Can the "naked" domain such as newexample.com (i.e. without anything such as www. before it) be served by Google App Engine?
Then the answer is no - see the FAQ
Wildcard subdomains let you have any subdomain the a user enters (e.g. myphotos.example.com, yourphotos.example.com, etc...) be served by Google App Engine without having to set each one up individually. Although it does require a DNS provider that supports wildcards.
Is that somehow possible to access one datastore? Or access one app from different domains.
App Engine recently add support for a feature called modules (Docs: go, python, java)
App Engine Modules (or just "Modules" hereafter) is a feature that lets developers factor large applications into logical components that can share stateful services and communicate in a secure fashion. An app that handles customer requests might include separate modules to handle other tasks:
API requests from mobile devices
Internal, admin-like requests
Backend processing such as billing pipelines and data analysis
When you create a new module, App Engine will create a url that corresponds to the module name. If you only have one module then the name will be default. e.g.
http://default.myapp.appspot.com
http://mobile‑frontend.myapp.appspot.com
http://my-module.myapp.appspot.com
Using Domain masking, you could then direct from:
www.myapp.com => http://default.myapp.appspot.com
www.myapp-mobile.com => http://mobile‑frontend.myapp.appspot.com
www.example.com => http://my-module.myapp.appspot.com
Every app has its own datastore and memcache (shared among all versions of that app).
It seems not possible to share datastores between applications right now (unless you provide some web service for that), but that would be a nice feature to have, so maybe you should file a feature request with Google vote for it.
As for domains, you can associate your app with domains managed by Google Apps. Multiple domains for the same application should be no problem (except for SSL certificates).
Every version of an app is backed by the same datastore. If you want to limit access for individual requests, you'll need to add a field to your model to enforce that restriction. There are low level hooks in the datastore API for this sort of thing, if you want to go that far.
And yes, you can add a single App Engine app to multiple domains - even in multiple Apps accounts.
Kyle's solution would work, but App Engine was never designed to be used in this way. So if you architect your app(s) to rely on this kind of setup and Google clamps down for whatever reason then you'd be screwed.
You can have multitenancy using the Namespace Java API