Posted by Wesley Chun (@wescpy), Developer Advocate, Google Cloud
The previous Module 7 episode of Serverless Migration Station gave developers an idea of how App Engine push tasks work and how to implement their use in an existing App Engine ndb Flask app. In this Module 8 episode, we migrate this app from the App Engine Datastore (ndb) and Task Queue (taskqueue) APIs to Cloud NDB and Cloud Tasks. This makes your app more portable and provides a smoother transition from Python 2 to 3. The same principle applies to upgrading other legacy App Engine apps from Java 8 to 11, PHP 5 to 7, and up to Go 1.12 or newer.
ndb
taskqueue
Over the years, many of the original App Engine services such as Datastore, Memcache, and Blobstore, have matured to become their own standalone products, for example, Cloud Datastore, Cloud Memorystore, and Cloud Storage, respectively. The same is true for App Engine Task Queues, whose functionality has been split out to Cloud Tasks (push queues) and Cloud Pub/Sub (pull queues), now accessible to developers and applications outside of App Engine.
Migrating App Engine push queues to Cloud Tasks video
The key updates being made to the application:
The bulk of the updates are in #3 and #4 above, and those are reflected in the following "diff"s for the main application file:
Primary differences switching to Cloud NDB & Cloud Tasks
With these changes implemented, the web app works identically to that of the Module 7 sample, but both the database and task queue functionality have been completely swapped to using the standalone/unbundled Cloud NDB and Cloud Tasks libraries… congratulations!
To do this exercise yourself, check out our corresponding codelab which leads you step-by-step through the process. You can use this in addition to the video, which can provide guidance. You can also review the push tasks migration guide for more information. Arriving at a fully-functioning Module 8 app featuring Cloud Tasks sets the stage for a larger migration ahead in Module 9. We've accomplished the most important step here, that is, getting off of the original App Engine legacy bundled services/APIs. The Module 9 migration from Python 2 to 3 and Cloud NDB to Cloud Firestore, plus the upgrade to the latest version of the Cloud Tasks client library are all fairly optional, but they represent a good opportunity to perform a medium-sized migration.
All migration modules, their videos (when available), codelab tutorials, and source code, can be found in the migration repo. While the content focuses initially on Python users, we will cover other legacy runtimes soon so stay tuned.
Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager for Google Developer Communities
DevFest season has officially started! From now through the end of the year, developers from all around the world are coming together for DevFest 2021, the biggest global event for developers, focusing on community-led learning on Google technologies. Hosted by Google Developer Groups (GDG) all across the globe, DevFest events are uniquely curated by their local GDG organizers to fit the needs and interests of the local community.
The mission
This year, DevFest 2021 inspires local developers to learn and connect as a community by exploring how to use Google technology to accelerate economic impact. In light of COVID-19, the global economy has shrunk and millions of jobs have been lost. Developers are the backbone of technology, and they play a pivotal role in the recovery of the global economy. In fact, expanding the impact of developers has never been more important!
Luckily, DevFest is the perfect opportunity for Google Developer Groups to show up for developers and their communities during such a challenging time. At DevFest 2021, GDGs and attendees will have the opportunity to explore how to use technology for good where it’s needed most.
Accelerating local economic recovery looks different across the globe, and GDGs hosting DevFest events are encouraged to consider the challenges their specific regions may be facing. For example, GDGs may choose to focus their DevFest events on building solutions that help local businesses grow, or they may prioritize upskilling their community by sharing technical content to help developers become industry ready. Whether it be through technical talks delivered in local languages or by simply meeting fellow local developers, DevFest 2021 will leave attendees feeling empowered to drive positive change in their communities.
What to expect
One of DevFest’s greatest strengths remains the passionate speakers who participate in DevFest events all across the globe. These speakers, often developers themselves, come from various backgrounds, perspectives, and skill levels to create a rich and rewarding experience for attendees. DevFest sessions are hosted in local languages in many different parts of the world.
This DevFest season, attendees will receive career support and mentorship opportunities from senior developers, including speakers from Google, Google Developer Group leaders, Google Developer Experts, and Women Techmakers.
Hands-on demos, workshops, and codelabs will cover a wide variety of technologies, including Android, Google Cloud Platform, Machine Learning with TensorFlow, Web.dev, Firebase, Google Assistant, and Flutter. Through these events, developers will learn how Google technologies help them build solutions that make a difference.
Google Developers is proud to support the community-led efforts of Google Developer Groups during this flagship annual event. DevFest is powered by a global network of passionate GDG community organizers who volunteer their time and efforts to help developers grow together, and this event wouldn’t be possible without them.
Coming together
During DevFest 2020, 125,000+ developers participated across 700+ DevFests in 100+ countries. DevFest 2021 is already in full swing, with thousands of attendees across the globe collaborating with like-minded developers, learning new technologies, and building solutions to uplift their communities. Whether you’re looking to explore the latest Google technologies, level up your career, or innovate for impact, there is a DevFest event for you.
Find a DevFest near you here, and use #DevFest to join the conversation on social media.
Posted by Elad Ben-David, Nir Kalush, Dvir Kalev, Chen Yogev, Tzahi Zilberstein, Eliran Drucker
Tagline:
In light of the new policy that might cause accounts suspension, Bowling is a mitigation tool allowing clients to act and remove disapproved ads before risking account suspension.The tool audits (and offers the option to delete) disapproved ads that may lead eventually to account suspension in perpetuity.
Business Challenge:
Starting Oct 2021 Google is introducing a new strike-based system to enforce against advertisers who repeatedly violate Google Ads policies (read more about the change here).
An advertiser’s first policy violation will result in a warning. If we detect continued violation of our policies advertisers will receive a notice they got a strike on the account, with a maximum of three strikes. The penalties applied with each strike will progressively rise. Temporary account holds will be applied for the first and second strikes, while the third strike will cause an account suspension.
Advertisers with hundreds of accounts and billions of search keywords lack the bandwidth to monitor each violation, thus might receive repeated strikes and get suspended.
Solution Overview:
“3 Strike Bowling” is an automated solution which identifies and gathers all relevant disapproved apps and includes the option to remove violating ads, in order to ensure compliance and avoid account suspension.*The user can define an exclusion list of policy topics to ignore and not remove.
It’s a simple Python script, which can be run in either of the following modes:
There are a few output files (see here) which are saved locally under the “output” folder and optionally on BigQuery as well ( “google_3_strikes” dataset).
Skills Required:
Google Products Used:
Estimated time to implement the solution: ~2h
Implementation instructions: View on github
Posted by Shams Zakhour
We’ve heard from many folk that they want to learn Flutter, but don’t know where to start. So we have some great news for you — we’re giving away a free book for the next three months, along with a book club to help track your progress and answer questions.
Flutter Apprentice is written to build on mobile development fundamentals. It takes you through your first fully-featured Flutter app, including designing a complex UI, as well as more advanced concepts such as persistence, state management, and cloud storage with Firebase. The book even covers publishing on both iOS and Android platforms.
Flutter Apprentice comes from Razeware, the team behind the raywenderlich.com books, videos and tutorials. The book normally costs $60 to purchase, but you’ll have free access to Flutter Apprentice from today, October 6, 2021 through January 6, 2022.
Flutter Apprentice is a practical book, with lots of examples to follow and code that you can put to use in your own apps. And it’s based on the very latest Flutter 2.5 release and the latest features in the Dart language. Whether you’re an experienced developer looking to deepen your understanding of Flutter’s more advanced features, or you’re new to app development and interested in adding Flutter to your front-end development toolkit, we think you’ll find plenty of useful content.
Learn Together
We’re also excited to host the Flutter Apprentice Book Club, a weekly opportunity to hear live discussion and have your questions answered by the book’s authors and community experts. We’ll be partnering with Flutteristas and other prominent leaders in the Flutter community to host the book club. Join us each Wednesday at 12pm EST / 9am PST on the Flutter Community YouTube channel for summaries, and discussions.
Stay tuned for pop quizzes, chances to win your very own Dash plushie, AMAs with the book’s authors and more.
Get Access
To get started, go to flutter.dev/apprentice-giveaway, where you’ll find instructions on accessing the book.
You can also subscribe to updates from the Flutter team. We’re looking forward to joining you on the journey; see you along the way!
Posted by Mike Rhemtulla, Product Manager
Google Workspace Marketplace is proud to announce the availability for developers to display pricing for their applications published in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and the date their application listing was last updated.
Launched over 11 years ago, Google Workspace Marketplace has been helping developers connect with the more than 3 billion people who use Google Workspace—with a stunning 4.8 billion apps installed to date. That incredible demand is fueling innovation in the ecosystem, and we now have more than 5300 public apps available in the Google Workspace Marketplace, plus thousands more private apps that customers have built for themselves.
For developers, you can now specify the app pricing choosing from Free, Paid with a Free trial, Paid with free features or Paid. The app pricing can be updated in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK - Store Listing tab. We encourage you to specify this in order to provide more information about your Marketplace application for Workspace administrators and end users to evaluate and install your app.
Developers can select which app pricing model is available to users
Pricing will now be shown in the application information in Google Workspace Marketplace
When a developer updates the app listing or configuration in the Google Workspace Marketplace SDK, administrators and users are now able to see when the application listing was last updated by the developer.
When the application listing was last updated will now be shown in the application details in Google Workspace Marketplace
We have also added a new Editor’s choice section in the Google Workspace Marketplace. This new section has three curated categories; Work from everywhere, these apps help your organization be more productive, Business essentials, these apps help increase workflow productivity, and Apps to discover, these apps are new and innovative. You can find out more about the eligibility for these categories here.
New “Editor’s choice” section contains three curated categories in Google Workspace Marketplace
If you’d like to stay informed about updates like these and others to the Google Workspace platform please subscribe to the developer newsletter. And find us at Next ‘21, where we have sessions, demos, and labs covering the latest updates to the Google Workspace platform.
Posted by Christian Schalk, Developer Advocate
Google is proud to announce the Google Forms API! The Forms API is currently available in Restricted Beta, with Open Beta expected to follow in Q4.
Launched in 2008, Google Forms enables easy creation and distribution of forms, surveys, and quizzes. Forms is used for a wide variety of use cases across business operations, customer management, event planning and logistics, education, and more.
The new Google Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms and acting on responses, empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms. The API supports two key use cases:
Automating form creation and editing:The API enables developers to automate form creation and editing. This is especially powerful when dealing with large volumes of forms that need to be auto-generated from question banks or other data.
Reacting to incoming responses: The API also allows developers to build automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering business workflows based on response data.
Education Automation Integrations
Integrations with Learning Management Systems
Custom form/quiz generation from question banks
Student tracking with real-time dashboards
Customer Management and Support
Auto-generate surveys / forms based on customer data
Trigger notifications and processes based on responses from customers
Data Analysis and Visualization
Create custom visualizations with response data
Leverage push notifications to update in realtime
The API provides the following specific functionality.
Read forms content and metadata, including:
Read Responses Read responses to forms, including:
Notifications via Cloud PubSub
Subscribe to real-time form updates via Cloud Pub/Sub:
Receive either push or pull notifications when forms change
Get notified when a form is edited or when a form response is submitted
For the complete Forms API reference documentation visit:
developers.google.com/forms/api/reference/rest
Zapier , a leading workflow automation platform, will leverage the new Google Forms API to deliver a better experience for Zapier and Google Workspace users. Today, thousands of businesses use Zapier to connect Google Forms to 4k+ applications to automate tasks and key workflows.
To date, Zapier has used the Google Drive and Google Sheets API to deliver this integration. Now, a dedicated Forms API will provide a more stable and purpose-driven platform to build from.
The most common use case for Zapier’s integration with Google Forms is to send Form submission data to an app of the user’s choice within Zapier’s ecosystem whenever one is submitted. For example, a user can automatically create a Google Calendar event for a meeting booked via a Google Form.
Doing this today requires setting up “watches” via the Google Drive API on the spreadsheet that is tied to the Google Form a user wishes to integrate with Zapier. While this implementation is functional, it puts significant pressure on the Drive endpoint, which carries strict rate limits.
When a change to the Google Sheet is registered by the Drive API, Zapier then uses the Sheets API to identify the new rows on the spreadsheet that are tied to the Google Form and reads the required data.
With the new Forms API, Zapier will be able to achieve the same functionality through the Pub/Sub notification system to track new responses and the Forms API to find, read, and send the necessary data to third-party apps via Zapier.
This new implementation will result in faster and more reliable automations between Google Forms and the 4000+ apps in Zapier’s app directory.
Zzish, an innovator in the education industry, is leveraging the new Google Forms API in their Quizalize product to empower educators to personalize their teaching for every student.
Zzish will use the Forms API to help teachers easily convert between Google Forms quizzes and quizzes in Quizalize. This will enable teachers to search Quizalize's database of 500,000 standards-aligned quizzes and use them as Google Forms. Teachers will also be able to easily deploy their Google Forms as a fun classroom game in Quizalize.
We anticipate promoting the API to Open Beta in Q4 2021, with GA following in 2022.
The Forms API is currently in Restricted Beta. We encourage you to apply here to be an early adopter to get started with the API today! We’ll also send you important updates about Open Beta and improvements to the API. To keep up to date with all the APIs of your favorite Google Apps, please subscribe to the Google Workspace Developer Newsletter.
Posted by Vikrant Rana, Product Manager, and Badi Azad, Group Product Manager
Google Identity strives to be the best stewards for Google Account users who entrust us to protect their data. At the same time, we want to help our developer community build apps that give users amazing experiences. Together, Google and developers can provide users three important ways to manage sharing their data:
In service of that stewardship, today we are announcing an OAuth consent experience that simplifies how users can share data with apps. This experience also improves the consent conversion for apps that use incremental authorization, which requests only one scope. Users can now easily share this kind of request with a single tap.
Previous Screen New Screen
Let’s summarize a few past improvements so you have a full picture of the work we have been doing on the OAuth consent flow.
In mid-2019, we significantly overhauled the consent screen to give users fine-grained control over the account data they chose to share with a given app. In that flow, when an app requested access to multiple Google resources, the user would see one screen for each scope.
In July 2021, we consolidated these multiple-permission requests into a single screen, while still allowing granular data sharing control for users. Our change today represents a continuation of improvements on that experience.
The Identity team will continue to gather feedback and further enhance the overall user experience around Google Identity Services and sharing account data.
There is no change you need to make to your app. However, we recommend using incremental authorization and requesting only one resource at the time your app needs it. We believe that doing this will make your account data request more relevant to the user and therefore improve the consent conversion. Read more about incremental authorization in our developer guides.
If your app requires multiple resources at once, make sure it can handle partial consent gracefully and reduce its functionality appropriately as per the OAuth 2.0 policy.
Developers worldwide are creating open-source tools and tutorials; however, they have difficulty getting them discovered. The content published often spanned on many different sites—from GitHub to Medium. Therefore Google decided to create a space where the best projects related to Google technologies can be highlighted in one place—introducing the Dev Library, a curated archive of projects and articles built specifically using Google technologies.
Dev Library as a platform showcases blog posts and open source tools with easy-to-use navigation for these product areas: Machine Learning, Flutter, Firebase, Angular, Cloud, and Android.
What makes the Dev Library unique?
Not all the articles or projects submitted by you, get on the site! A team of Google experts look for accuracy and relevancy in each featured piece, so you know when you view the content on the site, it has the stamp of approval from Google.How does it help me?
Visibility. Developers can have a hard time promoting and publicizing their learnings, despite extensive expertise. Dev Library is one such way to reach out to the world and say, "Hey! I have created this amazing project. Would you like to check it out"?
In addition, you also get to network with fellow contributors who are also using the Dev Library to showcase their projects.
To celebrate the efforts of our contributors, we created dedicated author pages for each person, allowing them to collate their projects in one place.
What content can I expect to see on the Dev Library?To demonstrate the breadth of content on the site, here are some examples of published content pieces and video interviews with the developers who authored these posts:
What is the end goal?
Developers who know how to write well. Often we have witnessed developers with an entire portfolio of projects and knowledge bombs, still struggling to get it out there. But we need more developers writing about their work. Their struggles. Their code blocks. How their project was built up. And much more.
With the Dev Library, we somehow want to bring in that difference.
Upskill more developers to write well, market better, and reach out to a global audience waiting for long-form answers!
How can I support the Dev Library?There are two ways you can help us grow the Developer Library:
We can’t wait to receive your submissions and feedback!
Let Dev Library bring to you an amazing place to submit your open-source work.
Posted by Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate
Google Workspace offers a broad set of tools and capabilities that empowers creators and developers of all experience levels to build a wide range of custom productivity solutions. For professional developers looking to integrate their own app experiences into Workspace, the platform enables deep integrations with frameworks like Google Workspace Add-ons and Chat apps, as well as deep access to the full suite of Google Workspace apps via numerous REST APIs. And for citizen developers on the business side or developers looking to build solutions quickly and easily, tools like Apps Script and AppSheet make it simple to customize, extend, and automate workflows directly within Google Workspace.
At Next ‘21 we have 7 sessions you won’t want to miss that cover the breadth of the platform. From no-code and low-code solutions to content for developers looking to publish in the Google Workspace Marketplace and reach the more than 3 billion users in Workspace, Next ‘21 has something for everyone.
1. See what’s new in Google Workspace
Matthew Izatt, Product Manager, Google Cloud
Erika Trautman, Director Product Management, Google Cloud
Join us for an interactive demo and see the latest Google Workspace innovations in action. As the needs of our users shifted over the past year, we’ve delivered entirely new experiences to help people connect, create, and collaborate—across Gmail, Drive, Meet, Docs, and the rest of the apps. You’ll see how Google Workspace meets the needs of different types of users with thoughtfully designed experiences that are easy to use and easy to love, Then, we’ll go under the hood to show you the range of ways to build powerful integrations and apps for Google Workspace using tools that span from no-code to professional grade.
2. Developer Platform State of the Union: Google Workspace
Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate, Google Cloud
Steven Bazyl, Developer Relations Engineer, Google Cloud
Google Workspace offers a comprehensive developer platform to support every developer who’s on a journey to customize and enhance Google Workspace. In this session, take a deeper dive into the new tools, technologies, and advances across the Google Workspace developer platform that can help you create even better integrations, extensions, and workflows. We’ll focus on updates for Google Apps Script, Google Workspace Add-ons, Chat apps, APIs, AppSheet, and Google Workspace Marketplace.
3. How Miro, Docusign, Adobe and Atlassian are helping organizations centralize their work
Matt Izatt, Group Product Manager, Google Cloud
David Grabner, Product Lead, Apps & Integrations, Miro
Integrations make Google Workspace the hub for your work and give users more value by bringing all their tools into one space. Our ecosystem allows users to connect industry-leading software and custom-built applications with Google Workspace to centralize important information from the tools you use every day. And integrations are not limited to Gmail, Docs, or your favorite Google apps – they’re also available for Chat. With Chat apps, users can seamlessly blend conversations with automation and timely information to accelerate teamwork directly from within a core communication tool.
In this session, we’ll briefly review the Google Workspace platform and how Miro and Atlassian are helping organizations centralize their work and keep important information a mouse click or a tap away.
4. Learn how customers are empowering their workforce to customize Google Workspace
Aspi Havewala, Global Head of Digital Workplace, Verizon
Organizations small and large are seeing their needs grow increasingly diverse as they pursue digital transformation projects. Many of our customers are empowering their workforces by allowing them to build advanced workflows and customizations using Google Apps Script. It’s a powerful low-code development platform included with Google Workspace that makes it fast and easy to build custom business solutions for your favorite Google Workspace applications – from macro automations to custom functions and menus. In this session, we’ll do a quick overview of the Apps Script platform and hear from customers who are using it to enable their organizations.
5. Transform your business operations with no-code apps
Arthur Rallu, Product Manager, Google Cloud
Paula Bell, Business Process Analyst, Kentucky Power Company, American Electric Power
Building business apps has become something anyone can do. Don’t believe us? Join this session to learn how Paula Bell, who self describes as a person with “zero coding experience” built a series of mission-critical apps on AppSheet that revolutionized how Kentucky Power, a branch of American Electric Power, runs their field operations.
6. How AppSheet helps you work smarter with Google Workspace
Mike Procopio, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google Cloud
Millions of Google Workspace users are looking for new ways to reclaim time and work smarter within Google Workspace. AppSheet, Google Workspace’s first-party extensibility platform, will be announcing several new features that will allow people to automate and customize their work within their Google Workspace environment – all without having to write a line of code.
Join this session to learn how you can use these new features to work smarter in Google Workspace.
7. How to govern an innovative workforce and reduce Shadow IT
Kamila Klimek, Product Manager, Google Cloud
Jacinto Pelayo, Chief Executive Officer, Evenbytes
For organizations focused on growth, finding new ways that employees can use technology to work smarter and innovate is key to their success. But enabling employees to create their own solutions comes at a cost that IT is keenly aware of. The threats of external hacks, data leaks, and shadow IT make it difficult for IT to find a solution that gives them the control and visibility they need, while still empowering their workforce. AppSheet was built with these challenges in mind.
Join our session to learn how you can use AppSheet to effectively govern your workforce and reduce security threats, all while giving employees the tools to make robust, enterprise-grade applications.
To learn more about these sessions and to register, visit the Next ‘21 website and also check out my playlist of Next ‘21 content.
Posted by Sarah Fullmer, Program Manager
The Flutter Meetup Network (FMN) is an international network of Meetup groups united by their enthusiasm for Flutter. The FMN program mission is to foster a thriving worldwide community of Flutter developers by empowering community organizers to educate and inspire local communities with engaging events.
Meetups – and similar developer community groups - are a great resource. As Flutter has grown in popularity over the past few years, over 100 Meetup groups have sprung up organically around the world to celebrate and educate their members about Flutter. The volunteers who run these groups have hosted many awesome events and workshops.
We, in the Flutter team, see and appreciate these amazing communities. 💙 The Flutter Meetup Network (FMN) is now being launched to support these groups officially. Network members will have access to various resources (more details available soon!), making it easier to plan and host Flutter-themed events.
Meetups have many benefits, aside from networking. When stuck on an issue in your current Flutter project, chances are good that you can find a developer in your local Flutter Meetup who has solved a similar problem. Or, maybe they know the perfect package for your needs.
We are thrilled to support our amazing and passionate organizers and can’t wait to see what the Flutter Meetup Network does moving forward.
Join a Meetup near you! https://www.meetup.com/pro/flutter
