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Java Application Configuration with app.yaml

With app.yaml , you can configure your Java application more easily, and with fewer files, than with the standard web.xml configuration. You can use app.yaml as long as your application does not need to be portable to other Java application servers.

Note: If you created your project using the Google Developers Console , your project has a title and an ID. In the instructions that follow, the project title and ID can be used wherever an application title and ID are mentioned. They are the same thing.

  1. About app.yaml
  2. Required elements
  3. Static files and resource files
  4. Enabling sessions
  5. System properties, environment variables, and context parameters
  6. Servlet context listeners
  7. Secure URLs
  8. Requiring login or administrator status
  9. The welcome file list
  10. Skipping files
  11. Reserved URLs
  12. Inbound services
  13. Disabling precompilation
  14. Administration console custom pages
  15. Custom XML Output
  16. Custom error responses
  17. Custom PageSpeed configuration
  18. Auto ID policy

About app.yaml

app.yaml specifies how URL paths correspond to request handlers and static files. It also contains information about the application code, such as the application ID and the latest version identifier. This file is stored in the application's WEB-INF directory.

One of the benefits of using app.yaml is that it automatically generates web.xml and appengine-web.xml for you. It overwrites any content you may have written in those files. If you need to include a feature in web.xml that app.yaml doesn't support, simply specify it in app.yaml using web_xml .

The following is an example of a basic app.yaml file: 

application: myapp
version: 1
runtime: java

handlers:
- url: /admin/*
  login: admin

The syntax of app.yaml is the YAML format. For more information about this syntax, see the YAML website .

The YAML format supports comments. A line that begins with a pound ( # ) character is ignored: 

# This is a comment.

URL and file path patterns use POSIX extended regular expression syntax , excluding collating elements and collation classes. Back-references to grouped matches (e.g. \1 ) are supported, as are these Perl extensions: \w \W \s \S \d \D

Required elements

An app.yaml file must include one of each of the following elements:

application

The application identifier. This is the identifier you selected when you created the application in the Google Developers Console . 

application: myapp

version

A version specifier for the application code. App Engine retains a copy of your application for each version used. An administrator can change which major version of the application is default using the Google Developers Console , and can test non-default versions before making them default. (The default version is loaded when no version is specified or an invalid version is specified.) The version specifier can contain lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens. It cannot begin with the prefix ah- and the names default and latest are reserved and cannot be used. Each version of an application retains its own copy of app.yaml . When an application is uploaded, the version mentioned in the app.yaml file being uploaded is the version that gets created or replaced by the upload. 

version: 2-0-test

runtime

The name of the App Engine runtime environment used by this application. To specify Java, use java. Other runtimes are available; please refer to the runtime's documentation for more info. Other JVM languages can customize app.yaml based on the specified runtime. 

runtime: java

handlers

handlers define mappings between URL paths and a servlet , filter , or jsp that handle requests with those paths. All handler definitions begin by declaring a url pattern:

url

Defines the URL pattern for the mapping. This pattern can use an asterisk ( * ) at the beginning or end of the pattern to indicate zero or more of any character. The Java runtime does not support wildcards in the middle of a string, and does not allow multiple wildcards in one pattern. The pattern matches the full path of the URL, starting with and including the forward slash ( / ) following the domain name. 

handlers:
- url: /red/*

After declaring the URL, define the mapping with the following elements:

servlet

Declares a servlet class to map to the specified URL. The servlet is further defined by a name that other elements in the file use to refer to the servlet, and initialization parameters ( init_params ). The name for each servlet must be unique within the YAML file. Using unique names, you can declare multiple servlets of the same class with different initialization parameters.

filter

Declares a filter class to map to the specified URL in applications that use the javax.servlet.Filter package. A filter is a class that acts on a request like a servlet, but may allow the handling of the request to continue with other filters or servlets. A filter may perform an auxiliary task such as logging, performing specialized authentication checks, or annotating the request or response objects before calling the servlet. Filters allow you to compose request processing tasks from the deployment descriptor. A single URL mapping can include either a filter or a servlet, but not both.

init_params

Declares the initialization parameters for this mapping.

name

Declares a name used to refer to the servlet by other elements in the file. The name for each servlet must be unique across the deployment descriptor.

jsp

Declares a custom mapping to a JSP file from the WAR root. The servlet element for the JSP can contain initialization parameters. Note that App Engine supports automatic compilation and URL mapping for JSPs. A JSP file in the application's WAR (outside of WEB-INF/ ), whose filename ends in .jsp , is compiled into a servlet class automatically, and mapped to the URL path equivalent to the path to the JSP file from the WAR root. For example, if an app has a JSP file named start.jsp in a subdirectory named register/ in its WAR, App Engine compiles it and maps it to the URL path /register/start.jsp . You don't need to use this element unless you want more control over how the JSP is mapped to a URL.

The following example demonstrates a handler mapping containing all of these elements: 

handlers:
  - url: /red/*
    servlet: mysite.server.TeamServlet
    init_params:
      teamColor: red
      bgColor: "#CC0000"
    name: redteam
  - url: /blue/*
    servlet: mysite.server.TeamServlet
    init_params:
      teamColor: blue
      bgColor: "#0000CC"
    name: blueteam
  - url: /register/*
    jsp: /register/start.jsp
  - url: /*.special
    filter: mysite.server.LogFilterImpl
    init_params:
      logType: special

Static files and resource files

Many web applications have files that are served directly to the user's browser, such as images, CSS style sheets, or browser JavaScript code. These are known as static files because they do not change, and can benefit from web servers dedicated just to static content. App Engine serves static files from dedicated servers and caches that are separate from the application servers.

Files that are accessible by the application code using the filesystem are called resource files . These files are stored on the application servers with the app.

By default, all files in the WAR are treated as both static files and resource files, except for JSP files, which are compiled into servlet classes and mapped to URL paths, and files in the WEB-INF/ directory, which are never served as static files and always available to the app as resource files.

You can adjust which files are considered static files and which are considered resource files using elements in the app.yaml file. The static_files element specifies patterns that match file paths to include and exclude from the list of static files, overriding or amending the default behavior. Similarly, the resource_files element specifies which files are considered resource files.

Including and excluding files

Path patterns are specified using zero or more include and exclude elements. In a pattern, * represents zero or more of any character in a file or directory name, and ** represents zero or more directories in a path. Files and directories matching exclude patterns will not be uploaded when you deploy your app to App Engine. However, these files and directories will still be accessible to your application when running on the local Development Server.

An include element overrides the default behavior of including all files. An exclude element applies after all include patterns (as well as the default if no explicit include is provided).

The following example demonstrates how to designate all .png files as static files (except those in the data/ directory and all of its subdirectories): 

static_files:
  - include: /**.png
  - exclude: /data/**.png

Similarly, the following sample demonstrates how to designate all .xml files as resource files (except those in the feeds/ directory and all of its subdirectories): 

resource_files:
  - include: /**.xml
  - exclude: /feeds/**.xml

You can also set HTTP headers to use when responding to requests to these resources. 

static_files:
- include: /static/*
  http_headers:
    Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.org

Changing the MIME type for static files

By default, static files are served using a MIME type selected based on the filename extension. You can associate custom MIME types with filename extensions for static files in web.xml using mime_mapping elements.

Changing the root directory

The public_root is a directory in your application that contains the static files for your application. When a request for a static file is made, the public_root for your application is prepended to the request path. This gives the path of an application file containing the content that is being requested.

The default public_root is / .

For example, the following would map the URL path /index.html to the application file path /static/index.html : 

public_root: /static

Static cache expiration

Unless told otherwise, web proxies and browsers retain files they load from a website for a limited period of time.

You can configure a cache duration for specific static file handlers by providing an expiration attribute to static_files include ... . The value is a string of numbers and units, separated by spaces, where units can be `d` for days, `h` for hours, `m` for minutes, and `s` for seconds. For example, "4d 5h" sets cache expiration to 4 days and 5 hours after the file is first requested. If the expiration time is omitted, the production server defaults to 10 minutes.

(Script handlers can set cache durations by returning the appropriate HTTP headers to the browser.)

For example: 

static_files:
  - include: /**.png
    expiration: 4d 5h

Enabling sessions

App Engine includes an implementation of sessions, using the servlet session interface . The implementation stores session data in the App Engine datastore for persistence, and also uses memcache for speed. As with most other servlet containers, the session attributes that are set with session.setAttribute() during the request are persisted at the end of the request.

This feature is off by default. To turn it on, add the following to app.yaml : 

sessions_enabled: true

The implementation creates datastore entities of the kind _ah_SESSION , and memcache entries using keys with a prefix of _ahs .

System properties, environment variables, and context parameters

The app.yaml file can define system properties, environment variables, and context parameters that are set when the application is running. 

system_properties:
  myapp.maximum-message-length: 140
  myapp.notify-every-n-signups: 1000
  myapp.notify-url: http://www.example.com/signupnotify
env_variables:
  DEFAULT_ENCODING: UTF-8
context_params:
  rack.env: production

Servlet context listeners

The listeners element maps a servlet context listener to the specified URL, allowing you to set up a static state independent of your various servlets. Note that App Engine does not implement the contextDestroyed aspect of the listener. 

listeners:
   - com.example.MyListener
   - com.example.MyOtherListener

Secure URLs

Google App Engine supports secure connections via HTTPS for URLs using the *.appspot.com domain. When a request accesses a URL using HTTPS, and that URL is configured to use HTTPS in the app.yaml file, both the request data and the response data are encrypted by the sender before they are transmitted, and decrypted by the recipient after they are received. Secure connections are useful for protecting customer data, such as contact information, passwords, and private messages.

To configure a URL to accept secure connections, provide a secure parameter for the handler: 

handlers:

- url: /youraccount/*
  login: required
  secure: always

To disallow the use of HTTPS for the application, use ssl_enabled as follows: 

ssl_enabled: false

There is no way to disallow HTTPS for some URL paths and not others in the Java runtime environment. The development web server does not support HTTPS connections. It ignores the secure parameter, so paths intended for use with HTTPS can be tested using regular HTTP connections to the development web server.

secure has the following possible values:

Any URL handler can use the secure setting, including script handlers and static file handlers.

To access the versioned appspot.com URL for your application, replace the periods that would usually separate the subdomain components of the URL with the string " -dot- ". For instance: https://*desired_version*-dot-*your_app_id*.appspot.com/ .

Google Accounts sign-in and sign-out are always performed using a secure connection, unrelated to how the application's URLs are configured.

Requiring login or administrator status

Any URL handler can have a login setting to restrict visitors to only those users who have signed in, or just those users who are administrators for the application. When a URL handler with a login setting other than optional matches a URL, the handler first checks whether the user has signed in to the application using its authentication option . If not, by default, the user is redirected to the sign-in page. You can also use auth_fail_action to configure the app to simply reject requests for a handler from users who are not properly authenticated, instead of redirecting the user to the sign-in page.

login

Determines whether the URL handler is restricted to require that the user is signed in. Has three possible values:

If an application needs different behavior, the application itself can implement the handling of user logins. See the Users API for more information.

The following example requires a login for the /profile/ directory and an administrator login for the /admin/ directory: 

handlers:

- url: /profile/*
  login: required

- url: /admin/*
  servlet: com.example.AdminServlet
  login: admin

The welcome file list

When the URLs for your site represent paths to static files or JSPs in your WAR, it is often a good idea for paths to directories to do something useful as well.

A user visiting the URL path /help/accounts/password.jsp for information on account passwords may try to visit /help/accounts/ to find a page introducing the account system documentation. The deployment descriptor can specify a list of filenames that the server should try when the user accesses a path that represents a WAR subdirectory (that is not already explicitly mapped to a servlet). The servlet standard calls this the "welcome file list."

For example, if the user accesses the URL path /help/accounts/ , the following welcome_file list in app.yaml tells the server to check for help/accounts/index.jsp and help/accounts/index.html before reporting that the URL does not exist: 

welcome_files:
  - index.jsp
  - index.html

Skipping files

Files in your application directory whose paths match a static_dir path or a static_files upload path are considered to be static files. All other files in the application directory are considered to be application program and data files.

The skip_files element specifies which files in the application directory are not to be uploaded to App Engine. The value is either a regular expression, or a list of regular expressions. Any filename that matches any of the regular expression is omitted from the list of files to upload when the application is uploaded.

skip_files has the following default: 

skip_files:
- ^(.*/)?#.*#$
- ^(.*/)?.*~$
- ^(.*/)?.*\.py[co]$
- ^(.*/)?.*/RCS/.*$
- ^(.*/)?\..*$

The default pattern excludes Emacs backup files with names of the form #...# and ...~ , .pyc and .pyo files, files in an RCS revision control directory, and Unix hidden files with names beginning with a dot ( . ).

If a new value is specified in app.yaml , it overrides the default value. To extend the above regular express list, copy and paste the above list into your app.yaml and add your own regular expressions. For example, to skip files whose names end in .bak in addition to the default patterns, add an entry like this to skip_files : 

skip_files:
- ^(.*/)?\.bak$

Reserved URLs

Several URL paths are reserved by App Engine for features or administrative purposes. Script handler and static file handler paths will never match these paths.

The following URL paths are reserved:

Inbound services

Before an application can receive email or XMPP messages, the application must be configured to enable the service. You enable the service for a Java app by including an inbound_services section in the app.yaml file.

For example, you can enable mail and warmup by specifying the following in app.yaml : 

inbound_services:
- xmpp_message
- mail

Disabling precompilation

App Engine uses a "precompilation" process with the Java bytecode of an app to enhance the performance of the app in the Java runtime environment. Precompiled code functions identically to the original bytecode.

If for some reason you prefer that your app not use precompilation, you can turn it off by adding the following to your app.yaml file: 

precompilation_enabled: false

Warmup requests

App Engine frequently needs to load application code into a fresh instance. This happens when you redeploy the application, when the load pattern has increased beyond the capacity of the current instances, or simply due to maintenance or repairs of the underlying infrastructure or physical hardware.

Loading new application code on a fresh instance can result in loading requests . Loading requests can result in increased request latency for your users, but you can avoid this latency using warmup requests . Warmup requests load application code into a new instance before any live requests reach that instance.

App Engine attempts to detect when your application needs a new instance, and (assuming that warmup requests are enabled for your application) initiates a warmup request to initialize the new instance. However, these detection attempts do not work in every case. As a result, you may encounter loading requests, even if warmup requests are enabled in your app. For example, if your app is serving no traffic, the first request to the app will always be a loading request, not a warmup request.

Warmup requests use instance hours like any other request to your App Engine application. In most cases, you won't notice an increase in instance hours, since your application is simply initializing in a warmup request instead of a loading request. Your instance hour usage will likely increase if you decide to do more work (such as precaching) during a warmup request. If you set a minimum number of idle instance, you may encounter warmup requests when those instances first start, but they will remain available after that time.

In Java, warmup requests are disabled by default. To enable them, add -warmup to the inbound_services directive in app.yaml : 
inbound_services:
- warmup

This causes the App Engine infrastructure to issue GET requests to /_ah/warmup . You can implement handlers in this directory to perform application-specific tasks, such as pre-caching application data.

Administration console custom pages

If you have administrator-only pages in your application that are used to administer the app, you can have those pages appear in the Administration Console. The Administration Console includes the name of the page in its sidebar, and displays the page in an HTML iframe . To add a page to the Administration Console, add an admin_console section in your app's app.yaml file, like so: 

admin_console:
  pages:
  - name: Blog Comment Admin
    url: /blog/admin/comments
  - name: Create a Blog Post
    url: /blog/admin/newentry

For each page , url is the URL path to the page, and name is what will appear in the Administration Console navigation. Custom page names can only contain ASCII characters. Custom page urls may be re-routed by rules in the dispatch file , if one exists.

Custom XML output

If you need to use features of the Java web.xml which are not directly supported in app.yaml , you can include a block of XML that will be included directly into web.xml . 

application: myapp
version: 1
runtime: java

handlers:
- url: /admin/*
  login: admin

Custom error responses

When certain errors occur, App Engine serves a generic error page. You can configure your app to serve a custom static file instead of these generic error pages, so long as the custom error data is less than 10 kilobytes. You can set up different static files to be served for each supported error code by specifying the files in your app's app.yaml file. To serve custom error pages, add a error_handlers section to your app.yaml , as in this example: 

error_handlers:
  - file: default_error.html

  - error_code: over_quota
    file: over_quota.html

Each file entry indicates a static file that should be served in place of the generic error response. The error_code indicates which error code should cause the associated file to be served. Supported error codes are as follows:

The error_code is optional; if it's not specified, the given file is the default error response for your app.

You can optionally specify a mime_type to use when serving the custom error. See http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/ for a complete list of MIME types.

Custom PageSpeed configuration

Experimental!

App Engine's support for PageSpeed is an experimental, innovative, and rapidly changing new feature for Google App Engine. Unfortunately, being on the bleeding edge means that we may make backwards-incompatible changes to App Engine's support for PageSpeed. We will inform the community when this feature is no longer experimental.


When enabled, PageSpeed Service will be applied globally to your application. All versions of your app will be automatically optimized with the same configuration, that of the most-recently updated version. If you want to try a new configuration, perhaps to test some "risky" optimizations, you might expect that you could do so in a test Application Version while your users continue to use the default Application Version. But since updating the test version's configuration applies to all versions, the "risky" settings are applied to the version that your users use, too. Instead, to try out these settings, you could

PageSpeed is a family of tools for optimizing the performance of web pages. You can use the Application Console to enable PageSpeed with a solid set of safe default optimizations. You can also edit your application configuration to fine-tune PageSpeed. You can configure PageSpeed to ignore some URLs; you can turn on some "risky" optimizations that don't work for all sites but might work for yours. For a custom PageSpeed configuration, you can add a pagespeed section to your application configuration. An example that shows the possible parts (but not all choices) of pagespeed : 

pagespeed:
  domains_to_rewrite:
  - www.foo.com
  - https://*.secure.foo.com
  url_blacklist:
  - http://myapp.com/blob/*
  - http://myapp.com/comments/*
  enabled_rewriters:
  - MinifyCss
  disabled_rewriters:
  - ImageStripColorProfile

This section may have any or all of the following parts:

domains_to_rewrite
Which domains' content PageSpeed should rewrite. Normally, PageSpeed only rewrites data served by your application. But you can tell PageSpeed to rewrite content from other domains when your application shows that data. For example, your application might use a free image hosting service on some other domain. Since the image hosting site isn't part of your application, PageSpeed doesn't optimize those images by default. You might want it to optimize these images: they can be compressed and cached by Google, and thus displayed faster. You might not want it to optimize these images: Since pagespeed optimizes the images, you will be charged whenever those images are served.
url_blacklist
This is a list of URLS; the * character is a wildcard. PageSpeed won't try to optimize URLs matching these URLs. This can be especially useful if you turn on some "risky" optimizations that break content for some URLs but make the rest of your site much much faster. By default, there is no blacklist.
enabled_rewriters , disabled_rewriters
By default, some "safe" optimization rewriters are turned on. Other "risky" optimizations are not turned on. You can choose more optimizations to use by listing them in enabled_rewriters ; you can turn off default rewriters by listing them in disabled_rewriters . The following rewriters are available:

HTML Rewriters

CSS Rewriters

Image Rewriters

JavaScript Rewriters

Auto ID policy

If you are setting entity identifiers automatically , you can change the method employed by setting the auto ID policy. You can choose default (default is also applied if you specify nothing) or legacy. Please note however that the legacy option will be deprecated in a future release and will eventually be removed. For more information, see our blog post where we announced the change. 

auto_id_policy: default

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License . For details, see our Site Policies .

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