.. _tutorials.gettingstarted.introduction:

Introduction
============
Welcome to webapp2! Creating an App Engine application with webapp2 is easy,
and only takes a few minutes. And it's free to start: upload your app and
share it with users right away, at no charge and with no commitment required.

Google App Engine applications can be written in either the Java or Python
programming languages. This tutorial covers Python, and presents a lightweight
framework that is flexible and easy to extend: webapp2 is compatible with
the default App Engine webapp framework, but offers an improved response
object, better URI routing and exception handling and many extra features.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

- Build an App Engine application using Python
- Use the "webapp2" web application framework
- Use the App Engine datastore with the Python modeling API
- Integrate an App Engine application with Google Accounts for user authentication
- Use Django templates with your app
- Upload your app to App Engine

By the end of the tutorial, you will have implemented a working application,
a simple guest book that lets users post messages to a public message board.


Next...
-------
To get started developing Google App Engine applications, you download and
set up the App Engine software development kit.

Continue to :ref:`tutorials.gettingstarted.devenvironment`.
