Connecting to Firebase from Python Google App Engine

Question

I'm trying to connect to Firebase from App Engine, but I'm getting this error while trying to import Firebase using the Python-Firebase wrapper:

File "C:\_dev\PycharmProjects\myapp\project\project_handler.py", line 31, in <module>
from firebase import firebase
File "C:\_dev\PycharmProjects\myapp\external\firebase\__init__.py", line 3, in <module>
from .async import process_pool
File "C:\_dev\PycharmProjects\myapp\external\firebase\async.py", line 1, in <module>
import multiprocessing
File "C:\PYTHON27\lib\multiprocessing\__init__.py", line 65, in <module>
from multiprocessing.util import SUBDEBUG, SUBWARNING
File "C:\PYTHON27\lib\multiprocessing\util.py", line 40, in <module>
from subprocess import _args_from_interpreter_flags
ImportError: cannot import name _args_from_interpreter_flags

Other people seem to have the same issue, but I couldn't find the answer anywhere.

Answer 1

The python firebase by default uses the multiprocessing package for threading. By default, AppEngine blocks all multiprocessing calls. AppEngine does its own form of multiprocessing by creating task queues and spinning up other instances of your application upon load.

I've created a python-firebase-gae package to deal with this issue.