Getting Started

This section walks you through setting up your environment and creating an empty Ferris project. For an introduction to what Ferris is and how it can help, see Introduction.

Installing pre-requisites

Ferris requires installation of a handful of prerequisites.

  1. Up-to-date installation of Python 2.7.x and pip.
  2. Google Cloud SDK or alternatively, the Google App Engine Python SDK.
  3. PyOpenSSL and PyCrypto.
  4. Optionally, nose and ferrisnose.

If you want to take advantage of the easiest way of using Ferris you’ll need:

If you already have node, run:

npm install -g yo generator-ferris3

Tip

Sometimes setting up an environment can be weird and difficult. We feel your pain. If you run into trouble feel free to reach out to us on the mailing list. We generally recommend Ubuntu for development as setting up the Google Cloud SDK on Linux is extremely easy. We’ve written a script to setup a complete environment on Ubuntu. You can also use vagrant to run a headless Ubuntu VM on Windows or OSX; we also have an example Vagrantfile to get you going.

Starting a new project

As mentioned above, the easiest method of starting a new project is using yeoman. From the terminal:

mkdir my-ferris-project
cd my-ferris-project
yo ferris3

Yeoman will ask you a few questions and generate a project for you.

Alternatively, if you do not wish to use Yeoman you can clone the Ferris 3 Skeleton repository.

The App Engine Development Server

Ferris uses the same App Engine development server as any other application. See Google’s documentation on using the development server.

Note

If you’re using the launcher, the URL for your application and the App Engine console may use a different port. Make note of this as the tutorial and examples all use http://localhost:8080 and http://localhost:8000 for the application and sdk console respectively.

Warning

When using dev_appserver.py with default configuration it stores all data in the /tmp directory which is deleted upon reboot. We have created an app-server script that stores the data alongside the application.

The APIs Explorer

By navigating to http://localhost:8080/_ah/api/explorer locally or https://your-app-id.appspot.com/_ah/api/explorer live you’ll be able to browse and interact with the APIs explosed by your Ferris application. See Google’s documentation on testing APIs.

Note

As mentioned above, your port may be different if using the App Engine Launcher.

Deploying

Ferris applications are deployed just like any other App Engine application. See Google’s documentation on deploying applications.

Continue

Continue on to the Tutorial or dive into the User’s Guide.