Google App Engine works

This weekend I set to add some more features to one of my existing Google App Engine application, Our countdown app. I wanted it to send reminder emails once the events near their due date. (Something like Google Calendar).

Now I could have done it the easier way, and have a cronjob executing every day to check for the dates and send the mails. But I found that the appengine has a neat service called the "Task Queue". One can schedule tasks in this queue, and then set up a "web-hook", which the appengine would invoke as and when it finds appropriate. This is much more neat and scalable for an enterprise application. (In my case, I have only 2 mails to configure :-), but I am happy to know that my design will scale under heady load). Among other features of the Task Queue, one can configure the rate at which the tasks can be executed and also the HTTP request type (GET or POST).

Next would be to once again enable the map application part on the page, and make it mobile (GPS enabled) devices aware. This is possible since the Google geolocation APIs support the detection of the iPhone and Android devices on the client side. Shall post the update, once that's done.