GAE Finally Supports Django!

Yesterday, Google announced the release of App Engine 1.6.2, which includes some impressive new features.  But the one that has most developers talking is the long-awaited arrival of Django support for Google's Cloud SQL.

Django is a popular third-party Python web framework, and when coupled with Google Cloud SQL, all of its functionality can be fully supported while running on App Engine. Support for using Google Cloud SQL with Django is provided by a custom Django database backend which wraps Django's MySQL backend.

-- Google Developers

There are a list of prerequisites from Google in order to use Django with Cloud SQL:

• Complete the steps for Getting Started with Google Cloud SQL
  Read and complete the steps from the Getting Started documentation to create a Google Cloud SQL instance and to create a database. Additionally, if you would like to use a local MySQL server during development, ensure that you have completed the steps to install MySQL on your machine.
• Download the Python App Engine SDK
  All of the libraries needed for using Django with Google Cloud SQL have been bundled with the App Engine SDK starting at version 1.6.2. If you haven't done so already, download and install the latest version of the Python SDK to your computer.
• Complete the Django tutorial
  This guide will assume the reader has a basic level of familiarity with Django. If you haven't done so already, complete the Django tutorial on Writing your first Django app. You can use the resulting project from the tutorial as a base for enabling integration with Google Cloud SQL.
  
  -- Google Developers

Google Developers also offer some great documentation on usage, authentication, management commands, porting, etc. so be sure to check it out.

Other new features for this release include:

• Experimental Datastore Backup/Restore
  Allows users to backup their Datastore to Blobstore from the Admin Console as a MapReduce within an application.
• Channel API
  Specify channel token expiration (default remains two hours).
• Task Queues
  New Task Header added used to track task delivery latency.
• Blobstore
  New Python API provides asynchronous API calls

For a full list of features and fixes from this release, you can check here.