At this year’s Google I/O conference, we announced a beta version of the Google Plugin for Eclipse that added App Engine Tools for Android developers. A release aimed at removing the friction associated with building installable Android apps that rely on App Engine for server-side support. Since then we’ve not only been working on bug fixes and polish, but we’ve also added a couple of new features and today we’re excited to announce the GA release of GPE and GWT 2.4.
To jump right in, you can download this release from our main GWT download page.
The new features and functionality added since the beta release including the following:
App Engine Tools for Android - Incremental RPC Tooling For Android developers that want to take advantage of App Engine for their server-side code we’ve added incremental RPC tooling to GPE 2.4. Back at Google I/O we demoed the ability to easily create a connected App Engine and Android project, as well as an RPC layer between the two (using Eclipse-based wizards). In the GA release of GPE 2.4 developers can now add server-side methods to their App Engine code and GPE will generate the necessary serialization and Android code on the fly.
For example, say I have an EmployeeService that exposes typical CRUD methods, but I want to write a custom query that looks for Employees with a start date after some specified date. As a developer all I need to do is write the server-side code and GPE will prompt me to do the rest.
Apps Marketplace Support In the GA release of GPE 2.4 we’ve also focused on making it easier to monetize apps by adding tooling that allows developers to deploy their apps to the Google Apps Marketplace in the same manner as we enable App Engine deployment. Below are some of the key aspects of this support.
First, GPE 2.4 now has the ability to create a default sample application that will help developers understand how to build an app that utilizes Google APIs (in this case Calendar), handles authentication, and is deployable to the Google Apps Marketplace. The sample is straightforward, prompts the user for the domain it is installed into, and fetches the user’s next 10 calendar entries.
Second, GPE 2.4 helps developers quickly get their applications listed (and updated) within the marketplace by offering an easy-to-use wizard to gather the necessary data, and communicate with the Apps Marketplace backend systems.
GWT Designer Enhancements We have made lots of exciting GWT Designer enhancements over the last few months as well. In addition to substantial startup and editing speed improvements, we have added split-view editing support for UiBinder so you can now see your UiBinder XML code side-by-side with the rendered layout. Even if you aren't a fan of editing in the design view, you can write code in the source view and see the UI instantly rendered in the design view.
We have also added direct CSS editing from within the GWT Designer property view. This makes it very easy to add new CSS styles or edit existing CSS styles just like any other GWT property.
Want to get started? Download the GA release of GPE and GWT 2.4 here. Note, to try out the App Engine tools for Android you’ll need to install the Android Developer Tools (ADT) plugin as a prerequisite, which can be found here.
If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it and the GWT/GPE Group is the right place to submit it. The App Engine and Android Developer Groups are also great sources of information.
Chris Ramsdale, Product Manager, Developer Tools cramsdale@google.com
