Helipad is a really simple "micro-framework" that makes it easy to do the stupid stuff really quickly on Google AppEngine.

... Another one of these pieces of crap? You've got to be kidding.

As great as AppEngine is, it seemed like some stupid stuff (like the Hello World) built with webapp was more verbose than it needed to be. I figured that there must be a way to be a bit more terse without losing any clarity. This little file has a few helpers that are just shorthand for things that you can do with webapp.

Getting started with helipad is simple. Put helipad.py file in the directory where your application is and import helipad.

Take a look at the sample application

sample-app/yourapp/handlers/

Basic request handlers

app.yaml

handlers:
- url: /helloworld/
  script: yourapp/handlers/helloworld.py

- url: /pages/.*
  script: yourapp/handlers/pages.py

- url: /pages-prefixed/.*
  script: yourapp/handlers/pages_prefixed.py

- url: /pages-unordered/.*
  script: yourapp/handlers/pages_unordered.py

yourapp/handlers/helloworld.py

import helipad

class HelloWorldHandler(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad World!')

main, application = helipad.app(HelloWorldHandler)

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

yourapp/handlers/pages.py

import helipad

class Page1(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page1')

class Page2(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page2')

main, application = helipad.app([
  ('/pages/page1/', Page1),
  ('/pages/page2/', Page2),
])

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

yourapp/handlers/pages_prefixed.py

import helipad

class Page1(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page1')

class Page2(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page2')

main, application = helipad.app('/pages-prefixed/', [
  ('page1/', Page1),
  ('page2/', Page2),
])

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

yourapp/handlers/pages_unordered.py

import helipad

class Page1(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page1')

class Page2(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.response.out.write('Hello, helipad! This is Page2')

main, application = helipad.app('/pages-unordered/', {
  'page1/': Page1,
  'page2/': Page2,
})

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Serving static files

Templates should be put in yourapp/tempates/

app.yaml

application: yourapp
version: 1
runtime: python
api_version: 1

handlers:
- url: /about/
  script: yourapp/handlers/about.py

- url: /about-shortcut/
  script: yourapp/handlers/about_shortcut.py

- url: /about-multiple/.*
  script: yourapp/handlers/about_multiple.py

yourapp/handlers/about.py

import helipad

class StaticPage(helipad.Handler):
  def get(self):
    self.static('templates/about.html')

# This tells helipad what module the path is relative to:
helipad.root('yourapp')

main, application = helipad.app(StaticPage)

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

yourapp/handlers/about_shortcut.py

import helipad

main, application = helipad.root('yourapp').static('templates/about.html')

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

yourapp/handlers/about_multiple.py

import helipad

main, application = helipad.root('yourapp').static('/about-multiple/', {
  '':          'templates/about.html',
  'company/':  'templates/about_company.html',
})

if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()