
Google App Engine PHP Runtime now available to everyone - zafirk
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2013/10/google-app-engine-php-runtime-now-available-to-everyone.html
======
nacs
This is probably going to sound a bit harsh but is adding general PHP support
in 2013 newsworthy? Pretty much every 'cloud' provider has provided support
for PHP for years now.

Not only that but listing things like "ability to easily read and write files
from PHP" and "support for [..] mbstring and mcrypt" as new features makes me
less inclined to try App engine for any PHP work as it seems even the most
basic things like writing files and mcrypt require App Engine-specific code.

I'd much rather just deploy to Amazon's EC2/Rackspace/generic VPSs than have
to add App engine specific changes to my code.

~~~
dragonwriter
PaaS's are basically hosted specialized frameworks, and as such usually
require framework-specific code. App Engine is Google's PaaS offering, and
most of your issues seem to be "I don't want a PaaS, but prefer an IaaS or
VPS".

As Google _has_ an IaaS offering (Compute Engine), it seems odd that, given
those complaints, you'd compare their PaaS offering against other provider's
IaaS offerings.

~~~
fleitz
The brilliance of PHP is drop files in folders, voila, website.

As soon as you know the terms IaaS, VPS, and PaaS, you know too much to be
using PHP.

~~~
Diamons
This is an example of someone who's riding the hate PHP bandwagon. Honestly
sick and tired of people who have no idea just what PHP is capable of who like
to bash it because it's "cool".

~~~
glazskunrukitis
I have come to a conclusion that the biggest haters are the ones who were
unable to learn and fully understand the language. They are really quick to
bash and hate because that's way easier.

Of course there are flaws and of course there are better designed languages
out there, but PHP is not going anywhere.

------
ryan-allen
I wouldn't host anything of importance on GAE, since Google has this odd
fascination with shuttering services with zero recourse for its user-base.

~~~
ajessup
Hey folks - App Engine actually has an explicit deprecation policy spelled out
to make sure this can't happen. See
[https://developers.google.com/appengine/terms](https://developers.google.com/appengine/terms)

~~~
hosay123
As a recovering hardcore Joke Engine user, I suggest not getting too tied up
on TOS minutia as arguments against App Engine when there are plenty technical
reasons to avoid it like the plague, e.g.:

\- Behavioural changes as a result of unannounced internal release process. Go
to bed, wake in morning to app serving 500s (happened twice)

\- Design flaw that ran so deep they had to redesign the datastore, insisting
on people start migrating before they even had migration tools ready. Prior to
that, at least one outage event required running the Google equivalent of fsck
and leaving "/lost+found" folders in everyone's datastore (WTF?!?!? Not even
once, dude!)

\- Latency that varies according to the phase of the moon, and you're billed
for it anyway.

\- Continually changing architectural story around apps. Last year: Memcache
is cheap, free, and shared! This year: Dedicated memcache, only $66/gb/month!
2 years ago: elasticly spun up processes! Last year: dedicated _hardware
thread_ , only $100/thread/month!

\- Let's not forget the wild pricing changes depending on how much the App
Engine team had packed in their crackpipes the night before

\- Service characteristics you won't see on any other platform (e.g. DB query
latency). So regardless of abstraction layers, your app inevitably ends up
designed for a single platform

It's a platform that succeeds only at exposing users with RAM-sized datasets
to planetary scale problems, all the while charged handsomely for the
privilege of the self-delusion that some edge was gained through all the
suffering. Seriously fuck all that. I could turn this into an essay but why
bother.

~~~
fleitz
No kidding, the service should be renamed GA2EE. It's slow as hell, never
works, and requires you to custom code for their 'enteprise' platform to solve
problems no one even has.

God forbid the bill you'd get for actually scaling to a size that started to
require whatever GA2EE really is.

------
neals
Sometimes I worry. All this time I spent learning to maintain my own server,
even though I am definitely a developer-first, is it wasted when PaaS are
getting more common. Am I holding myself back by sticking to my own setup or
am I keeping things cost- and performance efficient? Will this be an issue
when I (finally) really need to scale up?

~~~
prottmann
If you scale up, you wish you didnt do the failure of running an own "cost-
and performance efficient" solution. We did the same failure for many years.

If you scale up, normally you did not have time to look for better solutions,
because you need your time for your product and customers and not for your
server. The problem is that you then loose customers or slow down the growth
and that cost more then some bucks for a better cloud solution (and yes, cloud
cost more).

------
guidopallemans
What is it that Google has with Jetbrains? First they move their Android dev
to intellij, now this...?

~~~
gfosco
They probably have a lot of respect for their tools. Jetbrains has some
incredible products. WebStorm, PHPStorm, ReSharper, AppCode, etc.

In this case, though, it looks like Jetbrains wrote a plug-in for PHPStorm,
and Google is just mentioning it as a good method.

------
tlarkworthy
I use GAE with python a lot. But you can't find forum software not implemented
in PHP. I wonder how easy it will be to rewire existing PHD apps for GAE?

One serious issue is caching gets. Those rack up your bills in no time unless
you memcache stuff.

Interesting stuff though.

~~~
ajessup
You can use many forum products today if you use Cloud SQL as your storage
service (and it's pretty cheap, it starts at ~$10/month).

eg. phpBB - [http://fredsa.allen-sauer.com/2013/07/standing-up-phpbb-
inst...](http://fredsa.allen-sauer.com/2013/07/standing-up-phpbb-instance-on-
google.html)

~~~
tlarkworthy
yes that's exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for! Many thanks

------
dancecodes
I just saw some lines from GAE for PHP and saw very inconsistent and not quite
code.

All modules use require_once... well, well...

And other many issues...

But looks as massive code. Maybe translated automatic.

~~~
mortehu
> All modules use require_once... well, well...

Why on earth is that a problem?

~~~
itafroma
It's not necessarily a problem, but it's a smell. Modern object-oriented PHP
development is done with autoloaders[1]: having to require_once every class
file is unnecessary and brittle. It is odd that GAE doesn't provide its own
autoloader for its provided classes, and I'd expect that to be addressed in
the future.

[1]:
[http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php](http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php)

~~~
dancecodes
you mean spl_autoload

[http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.spl-
autoload.php](http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.spl-autoload.php)

~~~
dancecodes
more refine answer: just use spl_autoload_register

------
smartmohi
How to host PHP web application on GAE for free is explained in this tutorial.
[http://www.tinywall.info/2013/10/12/google-app-engine-php-
wi...](http://www.tinywall.info/2013/10/12/google-app-engine-php-windows-
getting-started-hello-world-example-gae-development-deploy/)

------
dancecodes
why not use something base of PEAR coding standards ?

public function foo($bar)

{

    
    
      //
      //return (bool) $bar;
      //

}

This can help:
[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/)

[http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer/](http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer/)

and enable flymake php linting

------
dancecodes
Why you use multiple namespaces in single module? It is not good practise and
smell. Official documentation don't recommend this.

------
jsnk
Please work on supporting Ruby now.

~~~
sebastianavina
and brainfuck

~~~
neals
I would move my enterprise CRM package over to GAE as soon as this becomes a
reality.

------
rjknight
I assumed from the title that this would be about Google open-sourcing their
PHP runtime.

------
hardwaresofton
long live php!

