Handling cron jobs on staging environment on google app engine

Question

I want to set up a staging environment on Google App Engine and have found good guidance for this in the following question: How to set up a staging environment on Google App Engine

The only unanswered question I have is how to handle Cron jobs in this case. Ideally I'll just have to change the version to deploy to production, however I fear that that would mean that all cron jobs also run on the staging version, or is this not the case?

Magnetite

Answer 1

If you're using a different version approach you need to pay attention to this:

If the target parameter has been set for a job, the request is sent to the specified version. Otherwise Cron requests are sent to the default version of the application.

I've been using the target parameter to direct cron jobs to different modules, based on the quote above I guess it could be used to direct jobs to different versions as well, using module routing via URL, probably something like this:

  target: version

or

  target: version-dot-module

Personally I prefer a different application approach to ensure no interference between the staging and the production environments, even when performing massive re-works breaking backwards compatibility :)

As for the method, I use 2 different workspaces from 2 different branches of the code, which have minimal differences between them (the application fields in the .yaml files and maybe other staging-related deltas):

• a staging workspace & branch
• a production workspace & branch

Whenever I'm happy with the code in the staging branch I:

• merge the staging branch in the production one
• update the production workspace and deploy from it -> updating the production app
• disable whatever I need in the staging workspace (committing the changes to the staging branch as well if so desired)
• deploy from the staging workspace -> updating the staging app

Probably the method would be usable in a different version approach as well, the version fields in the .yaml files being different in the 2 branches.

Freemanfreemartin