Uploading an image to a static directory in my app engine project?

Question

Hi,

Is it possible to copy images into a static directory under my app engine project domain?

For example, when a user signs up for my app, I want them to supply an image for themselves, and I would copy it to a static directory but rename the image using their username, like:

www.mysite.com/imgs/username.jpg
www.mysite.com/imgs/john.jpg
www.mysite.com/imgs/jane.jpg

but I don't know where to start with this, since the JDO api doesn't really deal with this sort of thing (I think using JDO, they'd want me to store the image data as a blob associated with my User objects). Can I just upload the images to a static directory like this?

Thanks

Answer 1

No. App Engine has a provision for static files, but only static files you upload along with your code. If users can upload the data, it is not really "static" in the app engine context. Depending on how large a picture you want users to be able to upload, you will want to use either the regular datastore (for storing up to 1MB) or the Blobstore for bigger files (up to 2 gig)

Answer 2

I'm almost certain you need to use the blobstore for dynamic upload. Even if you need not, for reasons of session independence you probably want to. As blobstore operations are expensive relative to a static file, you could have a task queue move the (now static) images into static store.