We are living exciting times! This week, Google has released an early version of their widely expected support for Java in Google App Engine (GAE).

GAE is a computing platform that can host your Web applications and offer them  massive and flexible scalability. Free accounts are available and you can pay for extra resources (CPU time, bandwidth, storage and mails sent).

Of course, REST is the perfect choice to build your Web applications that will live in the Google cloud. But, GAE achievements come with constraints because you share computing resources with others. So GAE makes you live in a sandbox with a limited set of Java APIs.

The great news is that Restlet has just been adapted to fully work with GAE! This port provides in a single “org.restlet.gar.jar” file:

• Full Restlet API
• HTTP(S) server via the built-in Servlet adapter
• HTTP(S) client via the built-in adapter to java.net.HTTPUrlConnection
• SMTP client via the built-in adapter for JavaMail
• Server-side GWT support via the built-in GwtShellServletWrapper class.

In addition, support for GWT is available in both GAE and Restlet (see this post on our port of Restlet on GWT). The usage instructions are available in our online User Guide.

Google France provided us the early access to GAE after their launch event in Paris last Thursday, in collaboration with Didier Girard, Technical Director at SFEIR and author of the OnGWT web site.

Thanks to all of them and to Guillaume Laforge (who ported Groovy to GAE) for their advices and help making this port a reality so quickly and for sharing their passion for GAE!

Update:

• New post: Restlet, a RESTful middleware for GWT, GAE and Android