Deploying a Java App

Deploy your app to upload and run it on App Engine. When you deploy your apps, you create versions of those apps and their corresponding services in App Engine. You can deploy entire apps, including all the source code and configuration files, or you can deploy and update individual versions or configuration files.

To programmatically deploy your apps, use the Admin API.

Before you begin

Before you can deploy your app:

• The Owner of the Google Cloud project must create the App Engine application.

• Ensure that your user account includes the required privileges.

• Give Cloud Build permission to deploy apps in your project. When you deploy your app, App Engine uses Cloud Build to build the app into a container and deploy the container to the runtime in the app's region. Cloud Build does not have permission to deploy Java 8 apps by default, so you need to give permission before you can deploy apps.

Setting up the Maven build tool (recommended)

To deploy your app using the Maven build tool, you must set up your project to use the Maven plugin for App Engine.

• Install the gcloud CLI, the app-engine-java component, and log in.
• Compile and build your project using the Maven plugin

Installing the gcloud CLI

To deploy your app with the gcloud CLI, you must download, install, and initialize the gcloud CLI.

Download the SDK

If you already have the gcloud CLI installed and want to configure it to use a Google Cloud project ID other than the one that you initialized it to, see Managing gcloud CLI Configurations.

Using a proxy

If you are running the deployment command from a system which uses an HTTP or HTTPS proxy, you must configure the tool so that it can communicate via the proxy.

Run the following commands to configure the gcloud CLI:

gcloud config set proxy/type [PROXY_TYPE]
gcloud config set proxy/address [PROXY_ADDRESS]
gcloud config set proxy/port [PROXY_PORT]

You can also set a username and password for the proxy. For more information, see gcloud config.

Deploying an app

To deploy your app to App Engine, use either the Maven build tool (recommended) or the gcloud app deploy command from within the root directory of your application.

Using Maven (recommended)

To deploy your app with the Maven build tool, run the following command from your project's top level directory, where the pom.xml file is located:

mvn package appengine:deploy -Dapp.deploy.projectId=PROJECT_ID

Replace PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project. If your pom.xml file already specifies your project ID, you don't need to include the -Dapp.deploy.projectId property in the command you run.

Important: Your project's root directory must not include other Maven modules, EAR packages, or .jar files that do not define an App Engine service. The deployment command iterates through the root directory to deploy your services and will fail when configuration files are not found.

Using gcloud command line

  gcloud app deploy [CONFIGURATION_FILES]

Replace [CONFIGURATION_FILES] with the path to one or more configuration files. Use a single white space to separate pathnames.

Optional flags:

• --version: Specifies a custom version ID. If you don't specify a version ID, App Engine generates one.
• --no-promote: Deploys your app without automatically routing all traffic to that version. By default, each version that you deploy is automatically configured to receive 100% of traffic.
• --project: Specifies an alternate Google Cloud project ID to what you initialized as the default in the gcloud CLI.

For more information, see the gcloud app deployreference or run gcloud help from the command line.

Choosing unique version IDs

For manually-scaled instances, the ID of your version should begin with a letter to distinguish them from numeric instance IDs. This ensures that requests are routed to the correct destination and avoids the ambiguity with URL patterns like 123-dot-my-service.[REGION_ID].r.appspot.com, which can be interpreted two ways:

• If version 123 exists, the request is routed to version 123 of the my-service service.
• If version 123 does not exist, the request is instead routed to instance ID 123 where the versions of the my-service service are running.

You can name your versions however you like for instances that are configured for auto scaling or basic scaling because targeting those instances is not supported.

OK

Deploying multiple service applications

When your application is factored into multiple services, you can deploy and update individually targeted services or all the services simultaneously. Deploying updates to services can include updating individual configuration files or updating the source code in the corresponding versions.

For example, you can deploy and create two versions in App Engine, where each version runs in their own service. The first version serves as the frontend service and the other as the backend of your app. You can then deploy individual configuration files to update only the settings of a service. You can also choose to deploy a new version to a service in order to update the source code of the frontend, backend, or both simultaneously.

Requirements for multiple services

You use the same deployment commands for deploying and updating the multiple services of your application with the following requirements:

• You must initially deploy a version of your app to the default service before you can create and deploy subsequent services.

• You must specify the ID of your service in the appengine-web.xml configuration file of the corresponding version. To specify the service ID, you include the module: [YOUR_SERVICE_ID] element definition in each configuration file. By default, excluding this element definition from your configuration file deploys the version to the default service.

• You must specify all the corresponding appengine-web.xml configuration files in your deployment command to simultaneously deploy multiple services. The default service must be listed first.

To deploy multiple services

From the root directory of the application where the configuration files are located, you run the deployment command and specify the relative paths and file names for each service's appengine-web.xml file.

Using the Maven build tool

If the root directory of your project contains only your services, you can deploy all those services with a single Maven command.

The Maven deployment command iterates through each of your project's services to locate their configuration files and then deploy each service.

Important: If your project's root directory includes other Maven modules, EAR packages, or .jar files that do not define an App Engine service, the command will fail when configuration files are not found.

To deploy multiple services using the Maven plugin:

1. Ensure that appengine-maven-plugin has been added to your parent pom.xml file.

2. Run the following command:

   mvn package appengine:deploy -Dapp.deploy.projectId=PROJECT_ID

   Replace PROJECT_ID with the ID of your Google Cloud project. If your pom.xml file already specifies your project ID, you don't need to include the -Dapp.deploy.projectId property in the command you run.

Using gcloud

    gcloud app deploy [CONFIGURATION_FILES]

Replace [CONFIGURATION_FILES] with the path to one or more configuration files. Use a single white space to separate pathnames.

You will receive verification via the command line as each service is successfully deployed.

Viewing build logs

Cloud Build streams build and deploy logs that are viewable in the Cloud Build history section of the Google Cloud console. To view builds in the app's region, use the Region drop-down menu at the top of the page to choose the region you would like to filter by.

Updating indexes

To create or update the indexes that your apps use, upload the datastore-indexes.xml configuration file to Datastore. Indexes that don't exist yet are created after that configuration file is uploaded.

It can take a while for Datastore to create all the indexes and therefore, those indexes won't be immediately available to App Engine. If your app is already configured to receive traffic, then exceptions can occur for queries that require an index which is still in the process of being built.

To avoid exceptions, you must allow time for all the indexes to build, for example:

• Upload the index.xml configuration file to Datastore before you deploy your version:

  1. Upload the index.xml file to Datastore:

     gcloud datastore indexes create index.yaml

     For information, see the gcloud datastore reference.

  2. Use the Google Cloud console to monitor the status of all your indexes:

     Go to the Datastore page

  3. After all your indexes are built, deploy the new version to App Engine.

• Build your indexes before migrating or splitting traffic to your version:

  1. Define a new version ID in your app's appengine-web.xml file.
  2. Deploy the new version.
  3. Use the Google Cloud console to monitor the status of all your indexes:

     Go to the Datastore page

  4. After all your indexes are built, use the Google Cloud console to migrate or split traffic to your version:

     Go to the Versions page

For more information about indexes, see Configuring Datastore Indexes.

Troubleshooting

The following are common error messages that you might encounter:

PERMISSION_DENIED: Operation not allowed

The "appengine.applications.create" permission is required.

If the Google Cloud project does not include the required App Engine application, the gcloud app deploy command can fail when it tries to run the gcloud app create command. Only accounts with Owner role have the necessary permissions to create App Engine applications.

Command not found

See Using local development server for instructions on how to set up the local development server tool.

Import Error

If you installed both the gcloud CLI as well as the original App Engine SDK, the entries to your PATH might conflict with one another and cause import errors. If you received errors when running gcloud CLI commands, follow the instructions for running the local development server.

[400] The first service (module) you upload to a new application must be the 'default' service (module)

Before you can deploy and create the multiple services of your application, you must first deploy and create the default service. For details about how to deploy a version to the default service, see Deploying multiple service applications.

Too Many Versions (403)

App Engine has a limit on the number of deployed versions of your application. These differ for free applications and deployed applications. You can use the Google Cloud console to delete an older version and then upload your latest code. You do not have permission to modify this app (403)

This can occur when the account that you are authenticated as does not have permission to deploy to the application ID that is specified in your command or in your appengine-web.xml. Check your application ID is accurate and matches the value of your Google Cloud console project ID. Next, check the project permissions in the console and verify that your account is listed with a sufficient permission level to allow for deploying apps.

[13] An internal error occurred while creating a Cloud Storage bucket.

App Engine creates a default Cloud Storage multi-regional bucket on your behalf, on the same region where your application is created. This bucket is required to store the contents of your application. This error is returned when this bucket cannot be created, in the following scenarios:

• The default App Engine service account is not present in your project. If your account was removed before 30 days elapsed since its deletion, you can restore it.

• Your project is under an organization enforcing the constraints/gcp.resourceLocations policy, and the organization is not allowing the creation of resources on the same region where your App Engine was created. You will need to override the enforced constraints/gcp.resourceLocations policy for your project, and allow the multi-region locations on the same region where your App Engine app is created.

Note: For example, if your App Engine app is created on the europe-west region, even though the region maps to the europe-west1 locations, you will have to modify the constraint to allow resources in the in:eu-locations, which includes all the EU regional. If your App Engine application is created on US and ASIA regions, you would have to allow in:us-locations or in:asia-locations, respectively.

[13] An internal error occurred

This error can occur if the App Engine's app.yaml configuration file contains an invalid resource name under the vpc_access_connector key. Make sure that the name field contains the correct project and region where your Serverless VPC Access connector is created.

If the issue persists after ensuring your app.yaml configuration is valid, use the Google Cloud SDK to re-deploy your service, adding the --verbosity=debug flag, and contact Cloud Support by providing the command's output.

Other deployment error

If your deployment fails, make sure the Cloud Build API is enabled in your project. App Engine enables this API automatically the first time you deploy an app, but if someone has since disabled the API, deployments will fail.

What's next

• Use services to build a large application.
• Split traffic or migrate traffic to route traffic to the versions you deploy.
• Review the gcloud app deploy command line arguments and flags.