Storing uploaded images on Google App Engine with Java

Question

I am looking at writing a Java web application on Google App Engine. I want to be able to upload and serve images from the app but just realised that the Datastore have a 1MB limit. This is slightly too little for decent pictures. Is there an alternative way you can suggest of doing this? Perhaps storing those as static content rather than in the Datastore but there seems to be no API for this.

Answer 1

There is no easy way today, but that can change later.

The best you can do right now is to vote (star) the request to add Google File System support to appengine in their issue tracker:

• Add GFS API support to GAE - http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1199

Answer 2

You can't write to the filesystem in App Engine, so static content is out for now - but an API for storing and serving blobs is on the roadmap. In the meantime, your best bet is to split the file into chunks, and store those in the datastore, or to use an external service like S3.