Cloud 9, part 2

After several months of ignoring Cloud9 (the web-based collaborative IDE) I sat down today and did something with it. Today's task was to build a cloud app that was compatible with Google's App Engine. And after a few hours, I did just that.

Cloud 9 supports several languages: JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and PHP. I picked Python, as I have experience with Google's App Engine (GAE) and Python.

To build a Python app for GAE, one needs the webapp2 framework. Webapp2 handles the inbound and outbound web requests. Cloud9 supplies a number of libraries for Python, but webapp2 is not one of them. Not a problem, however, as one can quickly install it with the 'easy_install' utility, which *is* included. (The webapp2 website has the instructions, and a sample program.)

Getting the webapp2 sample to run took some doing. (In my opinion, their sample is almost correct byt not quite correct.. I had to import the 'os' module and enclose parameters to the 'getenv()' function in quotes.

I found the documentation for Cloud9 useful -- once I found the right page. The Cloud9 web site has poor indexing into their support pages. Finding the right page is difficult -- until you switch to Google.

Problems were not limited to the Cloud9 website. Google Chrome failed as well, often displaying its "aw, snap!" page, forcing me to re-load the Cloud9 website (not a small site, due to JavaScript).

Overall, my experience was a bit frustrating, yet successful. Cloud9 may not have perfect documentation, but the IDE itself seems workable.