Installing Q2A on Google app engine (GAE)

Question

I am trying to install Q2A on GAE. Everrything works fine on local SDK environment but when I upload it to GAE servers following dont work:

1. no plugins under admin - plugin

2. First 2 URL structure dont work. This issue may be related to replicating htaccess on GAE, or app.yaml setting issus.

Please help.

Comments

GAE does not use .htaccess but it uses app.yaml. You need to put corresponding rules (for htaccess) in app.yaml.

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You are right. Also In my question I have mentioned the same.

Do you have any app.yaml example to get Q2A First 2 URL structures wordking on GAE.
I tried using the wordpress app.yaml example but it does not solve the issue.

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test please ignore

Answer 1

Q2A uses glob function to generate plugin array.

See files 

qa-include/qa-page-admin-plugins.php,

line 75 --  $pluginfiles=glob(QA_PLUGIN_DIR.'*/qa-plugin.php');

qa-include/qa-base.php

line 282 -- $pluginfiles=glob(QA_PLUGIN_DIR.'*/qa-plugin.php');

I am not sure why glob function is not working on GAE servers. 

As a word around I hard coaded an array of qa-plugin.php location.

example:

$pluginfiles = array(
    'question2answer/blob/master/qa-plugin/basic-adsense/qa-plugin.php',
    'question2answer/blob/master/qa-plugin/event-logger/qa-plugin.php'

              so on    .....

);

Comments

Is everything working after this change ?

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Plugins started to appear under admin/plugins which was missing before.
 
Google app engine has following typical directory structure, which i think had issues with glob function ( may be ~ or dot characters)
/base/data/home/apps/s~q2a/7.1233232323232/question2answer/qa-plugin/basic-adsense/

I am still working on the app.ymal for neat SEO configuration. No success yet.

Also, I am not completed with my testing. I am sure there are more such bugs out there.
Should the plugin issue with GAE be fixed as part of the core development??

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Hi,

this is great, but isn't the lack of relational database in GAE a no-go? Is this not the case for the PHP engine on GAE?

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Google cloud sql.

Answer 2

Update:

I have moved on to Amazon AWS from Google App engine. I manage my own cloud server and it has scalable options if needed.

There are many restrictions to the Google App engine-PHP such as uploading files (u have to use Google Cloud Storage), SQL configuration is cumbersome, certain APIs are blocks such as curl, etc.

I could not get Google Cloud Storage to work to upload images and that was my breaking point.

May be recently GAE has changed the restriction on API but still I find much better to manage my own server. 

If you still want to install the Q2A on GAE then follow the procedure to install the wordpress on GAE. It is very similar.