How can I Make a dynamic website with Google App Engine

Question

Recently I've been very interested with GWT and Google App Engine. Although I know little of the latter, I think I have a basic understanding of what is it.

From what I've read (and using my novice computer science comprehension) I've come up with: Google App engine is a service that allows you to host your code on Google servers. Once someone accesses your app it gets compile on their PC. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This is where the real part of my question comes in. I'm interested in making a dynamic webpage. Basically a blog. I remembered reading somewhere that the Wolfire Blog was built this system. I guess I'm aiming to make something similar to this but not quite as intricate.

So here are my questions.

Do I use GWT to develop the blog? Or is GWT separate from App Engine?

Where can I start? I'm going to read the basic tutorials on for the App Engine off of Google but are there any other resources? Maybe some that aren't even related to App Engine but are just tips on how make/start a dynamic web blog.

Thanks!

Supplemental:

I'm going to be using the Java variant of App Engine as I am not too familiar with Python.

Answer 1

Caveat: I am not very familiar with the Java implementation of GAE. I have experience with the python version.

Google App Engine is a framework for writing websites and web applications. The compilation all happens on the server. There is no compilation on the PC. If you are interested in writing a blog for practice, I would recommend finding an open source or public domain one that is already written for Google App Engine and then modifying it. Here is another question that is very similar to yours: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1086465/blog-engine-for-google-app-engine

If you are just want to create a blog site, I would just use one of the major ones (WordPress, Moveable Type). Writing your own blog software is close to pointless where there are so many good, 100% free systems out there. Most offer a free site that you don't even have to set up software on a hosted server.

Answer 2

GWT and GAE are two separate products, yes they can work together or independently.

GWT Allows you to write Java Code and have it compile to JavaScript to run on the browser. GWT also has some server components that run in a Java Servlet engine.

GAE is a Java Servlet Engine that happens to be able to run the Server part of GWT.

I would recommend you use the Eclipse IDE and download the plugin that Google provides to be able to do both. This plugin provides a very good integration between the two.

Look at these tutorials from IBM to give you an example of writing a GWT app for GAE

The GWT Apps book has how to write a blog with GWT. You are going to run into some issues with the persistence layer. Make sure you understand the persistence model well.