Deploying database on Google Cloud Storage in Android application

Question

In my android application I want to store images from my Android application to Google Cloud Storage. For that I'm referring to this Mobil Backend starter example. In that they have a backend database which is deployed on Google Cloud Storage, but I don't know I can deploy my own database there.

What are the steps to query the database in my android app? Please help me to implement this functionality. Can anyone suggest a tutorial or link which provides proper guidelines for using and storing DB on Google Gloud? Thank you.

Answer 1

If you are writing your own App Engine application that needs to use storage, you have several options in the Google Cloud:

1. The Mobile Backend Starter using the Datastore API, that provides a NoSQL like datastore in the Google Cloud that your App Engine application can interact with via the Datastore API. By default you get a total of 1GB of space in the free tier, after which you have to pay per use for your storage requirements.

2. There is the Cloud Storage API, that allows you to save objects to Google Cloud Storage Service. This service is analogous to Amazon S3 service and you can save your data, classified into groups i.e. buckets. This is a paid service. Refer to https://cloud.google.com/products/cloud-storage/

3. If you prefer to deal with SQL, you can look at Google Cloud SQL, which gives you a MySQL Instance in the cloud. This is a paid service too. Refer to https://developers.google.com/cloud-sql/

4. Finally, if you application prefers that you use the Google Drive account of the User itself, then you can look at directly integrating with Google Drive API. Recently Google introduced good updates to their Android Drive API. https://developers.google.com/drive/android/

In all the above cases, when it comes to interacting with the App Engine application, it is advisable that you expose the Data Services via a REST like API in your App Engine application.