
It's been few months since I started the [twikural][1] service. For the people who didn't know about Twikural;

[1]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com/ "Twikural - Daily thirukural"

[Twikural][2] is a web service that sends two couplets from the well known *[Thirukkural book][3] *everyday to its subscribers. People can subscribe to the service via either [Twitter][4] or [Facebook][5].

I have already open sourced the [code behind twikural][6]. If you like to browse the source code, you are welcomed to do so in [Github][7].

[2]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com/ "Twikural - Daily Thirukural"
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TirukkuÃ¡¹€ºaÃ¡¸· "Thirukkural"
[4]: https://twitter.com/twikural "twikural"
[5]: https://www.facebook.com/twikural
[6]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/open-sourcing-twikural-an-app-engine-project "Open sourcing Twikural"
[7]: https://github.com/vraa/twikural "Twikural source code in Github"

In this post, I'm going to explain the details behind the project and how the entire thing works. Lets begin.

## The Big Picture

[![][9]][9]

[]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com

The site runs on **Google App Engine **and built using **Java 7**. The Java code does not use any fancy frameworks - it's all plain old Servlets and JSPs. But in the front end, I am using **Twitter Bootstrap** to ease the designing task and supporting different screen sizes. To interact with Twitter, I'm using **Twitter4j**.

There are two *cron jobs *that scheduled to run at 9 AM and 6PM respectively and sends out the tweets and Direct messages to the subscribed users. Then twitter takes care of updating the Facebook status of Twikural page.

As you can see in the above picture, the site talks only to Twitter, even though it supports Facebook as a subscription channel. This made possible by using the Facebook integration feature that Twitter provides. Using this, whenever there's a tweet is published, Twitter will automatically update the connected Facebook page status.

Users can subscribe via either [Twitter][9] or [Facebook][5]. The advantage of subscribing via Twitter is that the user will get an direct message (and possibly an SMS if he'd enabled it).

[9]: https://twitter.com/twikural

So that's pretty much about what's happening behind Twikural at a higher level. If you'd like to read Thirukkural everyday, you should [subscribe to Twikural][10]. And feel free to share your feedback. The comments are always welcomed.

[10]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com/subscribe.jsp "Subscribe to Twitter"


Twikural - How it works?


It's been an year since I wrote the first part of [Hosting Java applications in the web][1]. Since then, the Java hosting arena has become crowded with the so many players, which is a good news to the developers like us.

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/hosting-java-applications-in-the-web "Hosting Java applications in the web"

Hence here I am, with the list of such hosting providers.

Disclaimer: This is just a *list* and not a comparison between the listed cloud providers.

## 1. Google App Engine (GAE)

[![][3]][3]

[]: https://developers.google.com/appengine/

Long term player in the cloud platform services. I've been running my two web apps ([timethetask][3] and [twikural][4]) for an year and haven't faced any issues yet. But you need to change your design strategy in order to abide by the rules put in by this platform (not an show stopper, though).

[3]: http://www.timethetask.com/ "TimeTheTask"
[4]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com/ "Twikural"

## 2. Amazon Web Services / Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2)

[![][6]][6]

[]: http://aws.amazon.com/

Not a platform (i.e. you don't need an SDK in order to develop Java apps) but provides machine that you can have full control over it. There are pre-configured machines with Java environment. Pretty popular in the dev circles.

## 3. Windows Azure - Java

[![][7]][7]

[]: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/

From Microsoft. ![:)][7]

[7]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

## 4. Jelastic

[![][9]][9]

[]: http://jelastic.com/

The good thing about Jelastic is you don't need to code to any API (unlike the GAE). You can upload any of your Java web app and Jelactic can run it/scale it for you.

## 5. Heroku

[![][10]][10]

[]: http://www.heroku.com/

I've already covered this news over here: [Heroku runs Java][10].

[10]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/heroku-runs-java

## 6. OpenShift by Red Hat

[![][12]][12]

[]: https://openshift.redhat.com/app/

Haven't personally used it, but from the reviews around the web, it seems like the platform that you can get started very easily. Try it out and tell me if its true.

**Would you like to add anything to the above list? Feel free to comment.**


Java web application hosting in the cloud


**tldr; **

It all started when I asked the following question to my twitter friends:

> Juts checking: If there's a service that sends you a Thirukkural every day, would you be signing up for it?
>
> '€ Veera (@vraa) [January 31, 2012][1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/vraa/status/164394058238799873

My idea was simple: to send out Thirukural poems everyday to the people that are signing up for the service. Instead of sending it to email addresses, I decided to use Twitter and Facebook as my medium since that's where most of the people are hanging out these days.

There were few tweeples responding to it positively. Even though there are already few other alternative services available, I decided to move on and build it as I thought the new service will be different and be a learning experience.

It took a weekend to code the 80% of the site and I hosted it on App Engine platform. And the site is live for the past few weeks -

[![][3]][3]

[]: http://twikural.veerasundar.com

Now, the service has [31 followers in Twitter][3] and [37 Likes in Facebook][4]. It has already sent out 120 Thirukurals till date. ![:)][5]

[3]: https://twitter.com/#!/twikural
[4]: https://www.facebook.com/twikural
[5]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

And, I'm now open sourcing the code. The project is now [hosted @ Github][6]. You are welcomed to check it out and if you'd like to contribute, feel free to send a pull request / contact me.

[6]: https://github.com/vraa/twikural

I would like to thank my fellow tweeples - [@iGhillli][7], [@anandhame][8], [@mgobi_php][9]   for their continuous support to this project.

[7]: https://twitter.com/#!/iGhillli
[8]: https://twitter.com/#!/anandhame
[9]: https://twitter.com/#!/mgobi_php


Open sourcing Twikural - an App Engine project


![Google App Engine on Netbeans][1]If you just started with App engine development, you might be having a feeling that Eclipse is the preferred IDE. And, Google also has offered its [official plug-in][2] to Eclipse IDE alone.

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/04/nb.png "Google App Engine on Netbeans"
[2]: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/tools/eclipse.html "It's easy to use the Eclipse development environment to develop your Java App Engine application, just as you can to develop any other servlet-based web application. With the Google Plugin for Eclipse, it's even easier. The plugin lets you create, test and upload App Engine applications from within Eclipse."

But what about the people who are not using Eclipse? Of course, you can always do a command line development but who does that these days!?

For **[Netbeans][3]** users, the plug-in **[nbappengine][4] **brings the Java app engine development to the Netbeans platform. Here's how you can start developing your app engine apps on Netbeans.

[3]: http://netbeans.org/
[4]: http://kenai.com/projects/nbappengine/pages/Home "Plugin enables J2EE development web modules on Google App Engine."

## Installing nbappengine plugin on Netbeans

1.  First thing first: Install the latest Netbeans (6.9 at the time of typing these characters) and open the IDE.
2.  Go to **Tools -> Plugins -> Settings **and click 'Add' button to add the nbappengine update center URL.
3.  Now give a name and the URL of the update center according to your version of Netbeans.
    - **Netbeans 6.9**: http://kenai.com/downloads/nbappengine/NetBeans69/updates.xml
    - **Netbeans 6.8**: http://kenai.com/projects/nbappengine/downloads/download/Latest_NetBeans68/updates.xml
    - **Netbeans 6.7**: http://kenai.com/projects/nbappengine/downloads/download/1.0_NetBeans671/updates.xml
4.  After adding it, now come back to the **'Available Plugins' **tab and do a search for 'Google'. Select all the plug-ins that are related to the App Engine and click install button.

## Configuring App Engine SDK with Netbeans

Now you've installed the nbappengine plugin on your Netbeans IDE.  The coming steps will tell you how you can configure the plugin with the App Engine SDK.

1.  Download the [App Engine SDK][5] for Java and extract the zip contents to your favorite location.
2.  In the Netbeans IDE, go to **Services window **(Ctrl 5 is the shortcut key) and right click on the **Servers **menu and select '**Add Server**'.
3.  Now select the '**Google App Engine' **from the list of servers and in the next screen choose the folder where you extracted your SDK files.
4.  Configure the server properties if you wish to change it and then click '**Finish'**

[5]: http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html#Google_App_Engine_SDK_for_Java

## Creating and deploying your first App Engine app on Netbeans

Now its the time to create a brand-new app engine application.

1.  In Netbeans, select '**File -> New Project -> Java Web -> Web application' **and follow the wizard to create the project.
2.  In the '**Server and Settings' **page choose '**Google App Engine' **as your server so that you'll get the app-engine related files (such as appengine-web.xml) pre-created for you.
3.  When you run/debug this application, Netbeans will start the app engine server (Jetty) and will deploy your application there.
4.  To deploy the application to the App Engine server, just right click on the project and choose '**Deploy to Google App Engine'. **it'll prompt you for the Google account credentials. After you provided that info, your app will be uploaded to the cloud.


App Engine Java development on Netbeans


Note: This post is written by/for the Java web developer who is using Google App Engine. Even if you are not an Java developer, but interested, you are welcome to read further.

![google-app-engine-logo][1]

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/img/2011/04/google-app-engine.png "google-app-engine"

When you create a new application in Google App Engine, you'll get a domain name 'yourapp.appspot.com'. But, who'll want to host their app with such a suffix (unless you like it!)?

To improve your app branding, the best thing to do is to host your app in '**www.yourapp.com**'. So, how to do this in App Engine?

There are two ways.

1.  You can buy a new domain name with Google partnered sites (such as GoDaddy).
2.  If you have already bought a domain, you can map that domain to 'yourapp.appspot.com'.

I'm going to explain the second method in this post.

## Steps to host GAE app in your own domain

### 1. Buy Hosting Space and Signup for Google Apps

1.  The first step, obviously, is you should buy a **domain hosting**. You will be adding CNAME entry in the DNS mapping to make things work and some hosting providers wont let you to add CNAME if you just bought only the domain name from them. So, it is good to buy the domain name as well as the hosting space so that you have full control over it.
2.  Then you need to signup for **Google apps** with your domain name. You can get a [free Google Apps version][2] which is pretty much sufficient for a small company/individual. You'll be asked to verify the ownership of your domain. Just follow the steps given there. You'll be also creating a admin account to manage Google Apps.

[2]: https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new "Free version of Google Apps - Signup page"

### 2. Add your application to Google Apps account

1.  Next, login to and go to the Dashboard of your app and choose '**Application Settings -> Domain Setup -> Add Domain**'.
2.  In the '**Add Domain**' screen, enter your domain name. You'll be asked to login to Google Apps with the admin account which you would have created during the second step. Once you login, your application will be added to your Google Apps account.

### 3. Add 'Ëœwww.yourapp.com' sub-domain mapping to yourapp.appspot.com

1.  Now login to **www.google.com/a/yourapp.com **with your admin account (if you are not logged in already). There you can see you app engine application listed in the Google Apps dashboard. Click on your appspot application.
2.  In the next screen, enter **www** in the text box to add a URL in the form of **www.yourapp.com**. As Google app engine does not support naked domains, you have to map the sub-domain, in our case **www**, to the appspot application. Once you add the URL you'll be given steps to add the CNAME record in your domain. After adding the CNAME record (explained in next steps), you should come back to this page and click complete.

### 4. Using CPanel, add a CNAME entry to ghs.google.com

1.  Now login to your domain admin panel. Since most of the hosting providers support CPanel, i'm giving the steps for CPanel.
2.  Login to **yourapp.com/cpanel **and go to '**Advanced DNS Zone editor' **where you can see the DNS mappings.
3.  Click the 'Edit' link against the **www.yourapp.com **and type '**ghs.google.com**' against the CNAME field. Leave other fields as it is. Save the changes.
4.  Thats it. It will take some time for the DNS propagation to happen. After that you can start accessing your appspot application with the URL **www.yourapp.com**!


Hosting Google App Engine application in your own domain


As a Java developer, I always choose Java as my first programming language to develop any of my ideas into a real application. If I want this application to be available for the world, then I have to put it on the web. But, when you compare with the options available for hosting a PHP application, with the Java's options, you can see a whole lot of difference. Usually, the Java hosting providers charge too much which you can not afford if your app is going to be a FREE service.

One of the main reason for Java not catching up with PHP in web programming, is the hassles that are involved in hosting a Java web application. As your Java web application is going be on a shared server, which will also shared by some other applications as well, maintaining your application on this environment becomes hard. You can not release a new version of your app, with out affecting other applications. If a change in your web app needed a re-start of server which may not be possible at all in a shared environment. But for PHP, none of these matters. That's the reason you can see a n-number of [PHP hosting][1] providers, but very few for Java.

[1]: http://www.webhostingsearch.com/php-web-hosting.php "PHP hosting"

So, In order to host your Java application in a **lower cost** you have the following options (as of today) in your hand.

## 1. Hosting Java application in Google App Engine

[![Google App Engine Logo][3]Google App Engine][3] is a free service from Google that [allows the Java applications][3] to be hosted on the cloud. And, it is completely free for starters. You only need to pay if you want more bandwidth or storage space, etc. But if your application is going to be a small one, you hardly need to pay anything for hosting your Java web applications in Google App Engine.

[]: http://code.google.com/appengine/ "Run your web apps on Google's infrastructure."
[3]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/google-has-brought-the-java-to-appengine "Google has brought the Java to AppEngine"

## 2. Amazon EC2 - Cloud Hosting

![Amazon EC2 Logo][4]Another hosting service from a biggie. Amazon provides this **[Elastic Compute Cloud][5]** (EC2) for all kind of computing resources. You can host your Java application in EC2 in very cheap rates. Hosting on EC2 costs you on-demand basis. i.e. if your web application is going to get lot more hits, which means increased bandwidth and computing on cloud, you get to pay more. Otherwise, you get to pay less. Pay for what you use, that's the advantage of EC2 (off course, there are lot more than this one!).

[4]: http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x201/talktoveera/logo_aws.gif
[5]: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers."

## 3. JavaProvider.net - Cheap Java Hosting

\**  
[![JavaProvider.net Logo][7]JavaProvider.net][7] is one the cheap Java hosting provider that I could find on Google. At around 5$/month, this service provides some competitive plans with good number features. They are using *CentOS\* as their operating system and they even allow you to start/stop tomcat, which will be a good thing.

[]: http://javaprovider.net/ "Hosting JSP/Servlets should not be expensive. We provide cheap but high quality Java hosting for developers from around the world."

## 4. Lot more Java hosting providers

![Java Hosting Provider Directory][7]Not content with the above list? You can always check this BIG [directory of providers supporting Servlet][8]. The website claims that the list contains the ISPs who support Servlet. But I'm not sure whether they provide proper Java application environment or not. You need to enquire the ISP properly if you are going to choose one from this list.

[7]: http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x201/talktoveera/servlets_logo_rnd-90short.jpg
[8]: http://servlets.com/isps/servlet/ISPViewAll "List of ISPs who support Servlet hosting"

I hope this list gives you the starting point for your [Java hosting provider][9] search. Are you aware of any of the ISP provider which is not listed here? **Do leave a comment, then!** Your input will be very much appreciated.

[9]: http://www.google.co.in/search?q=java hosting provider "Google Search - Java Hosting Provider"

If want to learn java for the web then join [test king][10] web development course and get free [testking 70-680][11] tutorials and [testking 642-825][12] demos to learn how to use java applications in web development.

[10]: http://www.testking.com
[11]: http://www.testking.com/70-680.htm
[12]: http://www.testking.com/642-825.htm


#app-engine (6)