Using the local development server

Python 2.7/3 |Java 8/11/17 |PHP 5/7+ |Ruby |Go 1.11 / 1.12+ |Node.js

The Google Cloud CLI includes a local development server (dev_appserver.py). You can use the local development server to simulate running your application in production App Engine as well as use it to access App Engine bundled services.

The simulated environment enforces some sandbox restrictions, such as restricted system functions and Python 3 module imports, but not others, like request timeouts or quotas.

The local development server also simulates the services provided by the libraries in the SDK for App Engine, including Datastore, Memcache, and Task Queues, by performing their tasks locally. When your application is running in the development server, you can still make remote API calls to the production infrastructure using Google APIs HTTP endpoints.

Running the local development server

Important:

• To run the dev_appserver.py tool, you must have a Python 2 interpreter of version 2.7.12 or newer installed on your machine (even if your app is written in another language or version, including Python 3).
• The dev_appserver tool does not support development of Python 3 apps on Windows.

After you create the app.yaml configuration file for your app, you can start the local development server with the dev_appserver.py command to run your app locally.

To start the local development server:

Running the local development server (dev_appserver.py)

The local development server is located at [PATH_TO_CLOUD_SDK]/google-cloud-sdk/bin/dev_appserver.py. To run the tool, you can either specify the full path when you run dev_appserver.py, or you can add dev_appserver.py to your PATH environment variable.

If you want to add the Google Cloud CLI tools to your PATH and enable command completion, run the following command:

[PATH_TO_CLOUD_SDK]/google-cloud-sdk/install.sh

OK

1. In the directory that contains your app.yaml configuration file, run the dev_appserver.py command. If Python 2 is not the default interpreter on your system, you need to run python2 dev_appserver.py to ensure the Python 2 interpreter is used.

   Specify the directory path to your app, for example:

     dev_appserver.py --runtime_python_path=/usr/bin/python3 [PATH_TO_YOUR_APP]
   

   You can also set the argument to a comma-separated key-value list like this:

     dev_appserver.py --runtime_python_path="python27=/usr/bin/python2.7,python3=/usr/bin/python3" [PATH_TO_YOUR_APP]
   

   Note: To test a Python 3 app, you must specify the Python 3 binary in the --runtime_python_path flag.

   Alternatively, you can specify the configuration file of a specific service, for example:

     dev_appserver.py --runtime_python_path=/usr/bin/python3 app.yaml
   

   To change the port, you include the --port option:

     dev_appserver.py  --runtime_python_path=/usr/bin/python3 --port=9999 [PATH_TO_YOUR_APP]
   

   Is dev_appserver.py not working?

   To learn more about the dev_appserver.py command options, see Local Development Server Options.

2. The local development server is now running and listening for requests. You can visit http://localhost:8080/ in your web browser to see the app in action.

   If you specified a custom port with the --port option, remember to open your browser to that port.

To stop the local server from the command line, press the following:

• macOS or Linux: Control+C
• Windows: Control+Break

Specifying application IDs

To access your App ID in the local server, for example to spoof an email address, use the get_application_id() function. To get the hostname of the running app, use the get_default_version_hostname() function.

Detecting application runtime environment

To determine whether your code is running in production or in the local development server, you can check the value of the GAE_ENV environment variable:

if os.getenv('GAE_ENV', '').startswith('standard'):
  # Production in the standard environment
else:
  # Local development server

Using the Users service

App Engine provides a Users Service to simplify authentication and authorization for your application. The local development server simulates the behavior of Google Accounts with its own sign-in and sign-out pages. While running under the local development server, the functions return URLs for /_ah/login and /_ah/logout on the local server.

Using Mail

The local development server can send email for calls to the App Engine mail service using either an SMTP server or a local installation of Sendmail.

Using SMTP

To enable mail support with an SMTP server, invoke dev_appserver.py as follows::

dev_appserver.py --smtp_host=smtp.example.com --smtp_port=25 \
    --smtp_user=ajohnson --smtp_password=k1tt3ns [PATH_TO_YOUR_APP]

where you set the --smtp_host, --smtp_port, --smtp_user and --smtp_password options with your own values.

Using Sendmail

To enable mail support with Sendmail, invoke dev_appserver.py as follows:

dev_appserver.py --enable_sendmail=yes [PATH_TO_YOUR_APP]

The local server will use the sendmail command to send email messages with your installation's default configuration.

Note: If you don't invoke dev_appserver.py with either SMTP or Sendmail as described, then attempts to send email from your application will do nothing, but the attempt will appear successful in your application.

Using URL Fetch

When your application uses the URL fetch API to make an HTTP request, the local development server makes the request directly from your computer. The URL Fetch behavior on the local server may differ from production App Engine if you use a proxy server for accessing websites.