My hacky solution of usage of 3rd party packages in python. If you have a better method, leave a comment!

Let’s start with flask example package by google.

  • git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/appengine-python-flask-skeleton.git
  • cd appengine-python-flask-skeleton
  • pip install -r requirements.txt -t lib
  • dev_appserver.py .
  • Visit localhost:8080

There is this lib folder with all of the dependencies in it like flask, jinja2, markupsafe etc. And in the code they are used like this: from flask import Flask

So, to import your stuff:

  • Download the package from pypi. For this example, I’m going to go through markdown package.
  • Extract it somewhere, copy the folder and paste into lib/ folder.
  • Preserve the name of the package like Markdown-2.4.1 in my case.
  • Go inside the folder and cut the markdown folder and paste under lib/ folder.
  • In the code, you can use it like: import markdown markdown.markdown(content)

Also check this if you are interested in how to use markdown in flask.

Default third party packages available on Google App Engine are listed here.