I'm trying to set-up a business website using App Engine. Previously, I had prototyped the site using my personal gmail account, but now I've purchased a domain name and have set-up google apps. So far, the only hitch I've encountered is getting my contact form to properly email people who try to contact me. Originally, I was using this code:
from google.appengine.api import mail
sender_email = "Admin <admin#example.appspotmail.com>"
mail.send_mail(sender_email, contact_email, subject, body)
I'd like to change sender_email to guru#example.com where guru is a "nickname" for my email account on Google Apps.
When I try to add guru#example.com I can receive an invitation email but can't add the nickname as a separate account.
Is there any way to do this without adding a new mailbox to my Google Apps account?
You will need to add a new mailbox.
I spent some time researching this issue and found no work arounds. Outside of possibly using Python E-Mail library and my initial look into it seemed more effort than it was worth for my applications. You will also need to host an email server somewhere and configure your mail exchange records in DNS properly.
If you do write your own email sending function and you're changing the sender your message will likely be flagged as spam.
Also if you plan on processing or receiving mail using your App Engine app it will need to be addressed to user#myapp.appspotmail.com as well. Thus negating all that extra effort to keep from using appspotmail.com
Related
I am trying to create a sample application that will use schemas embedded into email (particulary, ReviewAction described in the end-to-end example by Google).
I have created an google-app-engine application, deployed it as described. It works as expected, excluding gmail doesn't add any buttons to the email.
An email is being send to the same Google account that has created the application (From and To headers of the email are the same).
What I am doing wrong in embedding schemas into email?
ReviewAction hasn't rolled out to all users yet and it is probably going to take the whole next week before it is available to test. Sorry for the delay, I'm sure you understand it takes time to roll out features to all Gmail users and to all Gmail servers.
I just recently picked up a new number and cell phone plan, and would like to change the SMS or mobile phone number associated with my Google App Engine account, since the number that I initially used to register with was associated with some free texting service online. Alternatively, I would like to completely purge App Engine from my Google account, so that I can at least reregister for App Engine with my new number.
How can I go about enacting these changes? Who do I turn to for assistance with these issues?
Thanks!
Try filling out the SMS issues form and describing your issue in the comments section. If you're unable to see the form, a reply to this pinned Google Groups post about signup issues may receive some attention.
I have developed a dating website built on top of the Google App Engine, to which I would like to add instant messaging, and possibly/probably audio and video conferencing.
Given that the users on the website do not want to share their personal details or real contact information, I am handling all of the login information and sessions without assuming that the clients have (or even want) a google account ID or any other login that is associated with their real identity.
I would like to hear suggestions on how I could go about adding instant messaging to my website given that I cannot just directly access Google Talk or some other existing service.
Would it make sense to use XMPP for this, and if so will Google Talk or any other XMPP service provider allow me to register new user accounts without manual intervention (ie. after a user is registered on my site, automatically register them with the XMPP provider)? Or, if not, perhaps I can use a single google ID with Google Talk with a different resource identifier for each user (me#google.com/user1, me#google.com/user2, etc...), and send messages between the different resources? Could this work, and/or would having thousands of simultaneous connections to a single account get me banned from Google Talk?
Perhaps some kind of AJAX based solution might make more sense given the fact that users are already registered on my website, but are not registered for an XMPP service?
Any suggestions about how I might approach this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards
-Alexander
Text chat is the easier problem. You can do either with or without XMPP. Without XMPP, you'll be building a Facebook chat type client on your pages that sends messages from each user to the app, and the app then shows then on the recipient's screen.(The client can be polling, or use comet when it comes out). Check out olark to see how this works.
Once you build code to use the app as a switchboard that routes the correct message to the correct person (anonymously, maybe), you can port this easily to XMPP if you require. Both parties add you.dating.site#appspotchat.com to their buddy lists, and you send all messages from girl#site.com to guy#site.com and vice-versa. (assuming a heterogeneous site.)
Audio and video, I have no clue how to do without sharing details between the parties :-/
When I send emails through google app engine using the mail's send_mail function, they often get placed in the receiver's SPAM folder. Although this problem does not happen for GMail accounts, it does for Yahoo Mail accounts (and presumably several others)
Is there a way to get the emails GAE sends around the SPAM filter?
This is going to depend a great deal on what about the messages you're sending gets them marked as spam. Google's documentation suggests that it's the app engine that actually does the SMTP, so there might be some other google app engine app that someone's marked as spam and your sending IP (which happens to be the same) is getting tarred with the same brush, or it might be something about the content of your messages. Many big mail providers give you some way to determine how 'spammy' they'll think a particular message will be; perhaps you could get information that way?
Another option is the standard 'be careful to add [some address] to your safe senders list if you want to get email from us!' warning in your app.
See this reasoning, provided by Gmail on how it filters incoming email based on the header information. The key thing to note here is that all emails sent via GAE's SMTP infrastructure are sent via email IDs of the format xyz.apphosting.bounces.google.com, which by Gmail's definition itself brings the emails under the category of falsely / apparently bounced email messages, hence they get categorized as spam. The same would hold true for other email service providers that follow similar logic for spam filtering.
GAE still needs to come up with a good solution to this problem. In the meanwhile, the suggestion I would give you is to use an external email service. Since GAE does not allow you to open arbitrary TCP sockets, you can use the URLFetch service to submit requests to external services that can open SMTP connections and send email on behalf of your email ID.
While this approach shifts your email sending costs to the external service, it consumes additional GAE resources, namely- UrlFetch service API calls and UrlFetch Data sent.
Update: Google App Engine plans to launch support for outbound sockets soon as part of their production feature roadmap, so making external SMTP connections directly would become a possibility.
I don't have a cell phone, but Google App Engine needs an SMS message to verify the account. Is there another way to complete the registration?
I'm surprised they don't use a Gmail account to do this.
Edit : Google created one for me, problem solved.
No. If you don't have a way to receive SMS, you can fill out the SMS issues form to have an account created for you.
You could sign up with any web based sms service that enables you to receive sms via virtual phone numbers.
The first one i found that offers a free trial was esendex.co.uk.
But quick search will get you many more.
Or you could just ask somebody to lend you his phone for 5min in ... receiving sms is free after all.
They probably don't use Gmail because there are too many Gmail accounts in the wild. Gmail now requires verification by SMS or a voice call, but it didn't always. App Engine is limited to SMS only (no automated voice call option).
You probably have a friend whose cell phone you can use.
Actually Google have instigated quite strong protection on new gmail accounts, at least here in the UK #googlemail.co.uk addresses require SMS confirmation as well.