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GaeVFS is an Apache Commons VFS plug-in that implements a distributed, writeable virtual file system for Google App Engine (GAE) for Java. GaeVFS is implemented using the GAE datastore and memcache APIs. The primary goal of GaeVFS is to provide a portability layer that allows you to write application code to access the file system--both reads and writes--that runs unmodified in either GAE or non-GAE servlet environments.

GaeVFS ships with a servlet that handles file uploads and abstracts how it writes them to its virtual file system. 

GaeVFS is built on top of Apache Commons VFS, and you use their FileObject instead of the standard File class.  There are some examples on the GaeVFS wiki, but I had to play around for a bit before I figured out some of the differences I needed to know. 

One thing you get used to on appengine is that any bulk data work requires the task queue.  You can use a little bit of framework and make all of these transforms (including deleting data) a question of just writing a simple task class and firing it off.  You'll want a copy of the Deferred servlet: http://code.google.com/p/gaevfs/source/browse/trunk/src/com/newatlant... Fair warning:  I found that I needed to change the code to make it perform base64 encoding all the time, not just on the dev instance.

One thing you get used to on appengine is that any bulk data work requires the task queue.  You can use a little bit of framework and make all of these transforms (including deleting data) a question of just writing a simple task class and firing it off.  You'll want a copy of the Deferred servlet: http://code.google.com/p/gaevfs/source/browse/trunk/src/com/newatlant... Fair warning:  I found that I needed to change the code to make it perform base64 encoding all the time, not just on the dev instance.

 * Implements background tasks for * <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/overview.html">Google App * Engine for Java</a>, based on the * <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/deferred.html">Python 'deferred' * library</a>; simplifies use of the <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/taskqueue/overview.html"> * Task Queue Java API</a> by automatically handling the serialization and * deserializtion of complex task arguments.