Unlike a traditional web hosting environment, Google App Engine does not serve files directly out of your application's source directory unless configured to do so. We named our template file
index.html
, but this does not automatically make the file available at the URL
/index.html
.
But there are many cases where you want to serve static files directly to the web browser. Images, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript code, movies and Flash animations are all typically stored with a web application and served directly to the browser. App Engine can serve specific files directly without you having to code your own handler.
Using Static Files
Edit
guestbook/app.yaml
and replace its contents with the following:
The new
handlers
section defines two handlers for URLs. When App Engine receives a request with a URL beginning with
/stylesheets
, it maps the remainder of the path to files in the
stylesheets
directory and, if an appropriate file is found, the contents of the file are returned to the client. All other URLs match the
/
path, and are handled by the
application
object in the
guestbook
module.
By default, App Engine serves static files using a MIME type based on the filename extension. For example, a file with a name ending in
.css
will be served with a MIME type of
text/css
. You can configure explicit MIME types by using the
mime_type
setting when
configuring your handlers
in
app.yaml
.
URL handler path patterns are tested in the order they appear in
app.yaml
, from top to bottom. In this case, the
/stylesheets
pattern will match before the
/.*
pattern will for the appropriate paths. For more information on URL mapping and other options you can specify in
app.yaml
, see the
app.yaml reference
.
Note:
You can specify
http_headers
settings in the static directory handler to supply custom headers in the responses
returned by the handler. This is useful, for example, for including the
`Access-Control-Allow-Origin` header required to support CORS. For more
information, see the documentation for
http_headers
under
Static file handlers
.
Create the directory
guestbook/stylesheets/
. In this new directory, create a new file named
main.css
with the following contents:
Finally, edit
guestbook/index.html
and insert the following lines between the
<html>
and
<body>
tags at the top:
Reload the page in your browser. The new version uses the stylesheet.
Next...
The time has come to reveal your finished application to the world.