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Google makes it easier for Android & iOS devs to deploy cloud backends w/ Cloud Platform updates

Google is making some improvements to its Google Cloud Platform today that will make it easier for developers to provide cloud services across apps on multiple platforms. After first launching a preview of Cloud Endpoints earlier this year, Google announced today that the web backend solution for app developers has moved to General Availability. Cloud Endpoints provide developers with an easy way of building a simplified cloud backend to deploy across their web, Android and iPhone apps:

Google Cloud Endpoints consists of tools, libraries and capabilities that allow you to generate APIs and client libraries from an App Engine application, referred to as anAPI backend, to simplify client access to data from other applications. Endpoints makes it easier to create a web backend for web clients and mobile clients such as Android or Apple’s iOS…. For mobile developers, Endpoints provides a simple way to develop a shared web backend and also provides critical infrastructures, such as OAuth 2.0 authentication, eliminating a great deal of work that would otherwise be needed. Furthermore, because the API backend is an App Engine app, the mobile developer can use all of the services and features available in App Engine, such as Datastore, Google Cloud Storage, Mail, Url Fetch, Task Queues, and so forth.

Google also announced an update to Mobile Backend Starter, its “one-click deployable, complete mobile backend built on Cloud Endpoints.” The update brings support for large media files in addition to redesigned iOS and Android clients with updated UIs and the latest version of Google Cloud Messaging for Android.

The large media file support means it will now be easier for developers to deploy apps that allow users to view and upload, for example, large videos files and high resolution photos:

Handling Large Media Files: Many mobile applications let users view and upload videos and high resolution images. But storing and serving this content can be cumbersome. Google Cloud Storage offers high durability and availability at low cost. MBS now allows you to easily manage user-isolated and secure access to data in Cloud Storage directly from your iOS or Android application, with no server coding required… Imagine that you are building an expense reporting mobile app and you want to allow your users to upload pictures of their receipts. This is very straightforward. Your Android or iOS app can obtain a secure upload URL that only your application can use and then use standard client libraries to stream bytes to Google Cloud Storage.

Today’s update will definitely be welcomed by developers interested in using Google Cloud Platform and App Engine to build the cloud backend for their mobile and web apps. You can learn more and get started with the new Cloud Endpoints or Mobile Backend Starter now.

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Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s weekly Logic Pros series and makes music as one half of Toronto-based Makamachine.