1.. _tutorials.gettingstarted.introduction: 2 3Introduction 4============ 5Welcome to webapp2! Creating an App Engine application with webapp2 is easy, 6and only takes a few minutes. And it's free to start: upload your app and 7share it with users right away, at no charge and with no commitment required. 8 9Google App Engine applications can be written in either the Java or Python 10programming languages. This tutorial covers Python, and presents a lightweight 11framework that is flexible and easy to extend: webapp2 is compatible with 12the default App Engine webapp framework, but offers an improved response 13object, better URI routing and exception handling and many extra features. 14 15In this tutorial, you will learn how to: 16 17- Build an App Engine application using Python 18- Use the "webapp2" web application framework 19- Use the App Engine datastore with the Python modeling API 20- Integrate an App Engine application with Google Accounts for user authentication 21- Use Django templates with your app 22- Upload your app to App Engine 23 24By the end of the tutorial, you will have implemented a working application, 25a simple guest book that lets users post messages to a public message board. 26 27 28Next... 29------- 30To get started developing Google App Engine applications, you download and 31set up the App Engine software development kit. 32 33Continue to :ref:`tutorials.gettingstarted.devenvironment`. 34