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.