Google today announced the launch of its Mobile Backend Starter that allows Android developers to deploy a basic cloud infrastructure for their apps that runs on Google’s App Engine. Mobile Backend Starter provides developers with a one-click deployable mobile backend and a client-side framework for Android that provides them with storage services, access to Google Cloud Messaging, continuous queries and Google’s authentication and authorization features.
Google argues that most successful mobile apps now use some kind of server infrastructure to power their services, but for most mobile developers, that’s a distraction and often not something they are comfortable with. This new tool essentially provides developers with most of the infrastructure services they need for their apps without the need to write any backend code themselves. Because it runs on top of App Engine, the backend should also easily scale to handle virtually any load a mobile app can throw at it.
To get started, developers simply have to select the Mobile Backend sample app when they start a new App Engine project and follow the instructions here. While Google describes the process as “one-click,” it’s worth noting that while that’s true for deploying the backend, it does take a little bit more effort than that to get everything up and running.
Google first announced this tool at its I/O developer conference last month, but it looks like it only released it today. The project’s source code is available on GitHub, and you can watch the full I/O session about it below: