Quick start

If you already know webapp, webapp2 is very easy to get started. You can use webapp2 exactly like webapp, and learn the new features as you go.

If you are new to App Engine, read Getting Started with App Engine first. You will need the App Engine SDK installed for this quick start.

Note

If you want to use webapp2 outside of App Engine, read the Quick start (to use webapp2 outside of App Engine) tutorial instead.

Create an application

Create a directory hellowebapp2 for your new app. Download webapp2, unpack it and add webapp2.py to that directory. If you want to use extra features such as sessions, extra routes, localization, internationalization and more, also add the webapp2_extras directory to your app.

Note

webapp2 is part of the Python 2.7 runtime since App Engine SDK 1.6.0, so you don’t need to upload it with your app anymore. To include it in your app see Configuring Libraries.

Hello, webapp2!

Create an app.yaml file in your app directory with the following contents:

application: helloworld
version: 1
runtime: python27
api_version: 1
threadsafe: true

handlers:
- url: /.*
  script: main.app

Then create a file main.py and define a handler to display a ‘Hello, webapp2!’ message:

import webapp2

class HelloWebapp2(webapp2.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        self.response.write('Hello, webapp2!')

app = webapp2.WSGIApplication([
    ('/', HelloWebapp2),
], debug=True)

Test your app

If you’re using the Google App Engine Launcher, you can set up the application by selecting the File menu, Add Existing Application..., then selecting the hellowebapp2 directory. Select the application in the app list, click the Run button to start the application, then click the Browse button to view it. Clicking Browse simply loads (or reloads) http://localhost:8080/ in your default web browser.

If you’re not using Google App Engine Launcher, start the web server with the following command, giving it the path to the hellowebapp2 directory:

google_appengine/dev_appserver.py helloworld/

The web server is now running, listening for requests on port 8080. You can test the application by visiting the following URL in your web browser:

http://localhost:8080/