I guess your talking about file extensions like .htm and .jpg? Because of the way GAE serves static files using the file extension to determine the mime type it will be hard to remove the file extension. Using Apache web server one would use mod_rewrite to clean up URL’s. That is not an option here though.

You could look in the GAE Group for a solution.

If this is not the extension you were asking about let me know and please give an example.

Thank — Sam

Django is the way to go if you want to develop with python in App Engine. Is it more framework than you need? if your just throwing together small sites, Django may be overkill. If you haven’t done it yet, set up a Django site on GAE and see how it goes.

I think java on app engine is interesting. Google Web Toolkit looks interesting as does Groovy. Java skills are in demand so if your looking to dive head first into new technology that may be the way to go.

Before I make too many people mad here I should say that these are very personal choices and your the one most likely to find the right fit for what you want to do. So, experiment, there are no wrong choices. Thanks for making me think about this!

I also found this tutorial which talks about configuring googleapp engine with django apps.
please let me know if you have any views on this

http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/django-nonrel.html

This is a great article for me. I am just starting with goolgeapps standard edition and was not impressed with limited template/functionality provided by googlesites.

I needed a solution which can help me in quickly learning, building my web app locally and then host it with my google apps account. I have started brushing up my python skills after reading this wonderful article. they say… you can find anything on the web as someone would have already explored it. Thanks sam for this article and research you did.

Please share your thoughts on using already available MVC web dev frameworks such as Django, which make life a bit more easier while developing web applications in python. Is it possible for me to build applications using such framework(s) and then host them with Google app engine?

It would be quite helpful if you could guide me in this respect.

Very true, you can do a site on Google App Engine using just files from a static directory. As I said in the post, I wanted to demonstrate how to use template variables from the WebApp Framework to add dynamic content to web pages.Web pages inevitably have much redundant information that can reside in one template variable and be changed in one place. A menu for example can be stuck in one template variable and when menu requirements change you can make your changes in one place rather than in every page on your web site.

I tried to write the code so that a person with almost no technical skills could simply cut and paste the script changing a few variable names to add pages. My sample script also has a static directory. If a person is building a site based on my sample code and wants to add static resources, there’s a pattern for doing that too. Sample code is meant to be a starting point, after all.

As for “burning through Python resources,” this is GOOGLE App Engine. The free allocation is quite liberal and Google has a pretty solid data center.

Thanks for your comment and I am sure some readers will find your ideas useful.

application: mywebsite
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1

handlers:
- url: /
static_files: index.html
upload: c:/\mywebsite/\index.html

- url: /stylesheets
static_dir: stylesheets

- url: /images
static_dir: images

Then upload with the Google App Engine launcher. All that Python work is overkill on part of both human and webserver.

Thanks for telling me about it. – Sam