Google app engine,sockets are disabled,what it mea

Question

I have been reading the google app engine faqs.I have some files hosted at rackspace and i wanted to open them for use in my app.With the sockets disabled, does it mean i cannot open files hosted elsewhere other than those hosted on google?.

Answer 1

sockets in GAE is a coming soon feature.

I read from here http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/wiki/SdkForGoReleaseNotes

For now you need to sign up as a trusted tester to use this feature, but I guess this will be available to the public in the future.

But of course, as mentioned by the other gurus on top, you can always make things available http and then use URLfetch

Answer 2

Sockets in general are disabled. So you would not be able to FTP or SSH to your rackspace machines from within your App Engine code. However, App Engine does offer APIs to access files over HTTP.

Answer 3

See the urlfetch api for how you can open external urls.

Answer 4

For posterity's sake, I'll note here that outbound sockets are now available on App Engine with billed applications.