Configuring YouTube Direct's Multi-Instance Mode

Introduction

As of the 3.0 release, YouTube Direct supports multiple, logically separated instances to be served out of a single App Engine deployment. Each logical instance has its own configuration, set of administrators, and potentially its own custom UI.

While this functionality isn't for everyone, we envision service providers, agencies or consultants being able to deploy a single App Engine app and then set up multiple logical instances to handle different client deployments.

Technical Details

Multi-instance mode relies on App Engine's support for namespaces and multitenancy. A filter is defined in a special web.xml configuration file that automatically applies the correct namespace to a given incoming HTTP request.

Configuration Steps

1. Ensure that you're starting with an up to date codebase. Either download a 3.0 (or higher) tar.gz archive or sync to the SVN trunk using an SVN client of your choice.
2. Rename the web.xml file (in the war/WEB-INF/ directory of the downloaded code) to something else, like web_ORIGINAL.xml.
3. Rename the existing web_INSTANCES.xml file (in the same war/WEB-INF directory) to web.xml.
4. Follow the normal YouTube Direct deployment and configuration process, as outlined in the GettingStarted guide.
5. After you've deployed your instance to App Engine, visit https://APP_ID.appspot.com/instances/ and log in using the Google Account that owns the App Engine instance.
6. Create a new instance (referred to as INSTANCE_NAME in this guide) and permission at least one Google Account email address as an instance administrator. Repeat with additional instances and additional administrators as needed. Note: The Google Account email address you provide in this step does not need to be permissioned as an owner of the App Engine instance. Any Google Account email address will work.
7. Each instance administrator will receive an email with a confirmation link that they need to visit before they're activated as an administrator. Note: The App Engine development server can't send emails, so attempting this process from anything other than the production environment will not work.
8. For each new instance you add, create a directory under war/ in your codebase that has the same name (i.e. war/INSTANCE_NAME), and add a copy of embed.jsp to the directory.
9. You can then customize that war/INSTANCE_NAME/embed.jsp file as you see fit. Each instance's web submission form can maintain its own look and feel based on the customized embed.jsp file.
10. Deploy your updated code to App Engine again. When an administrator visits the https://APP_ID.appspot.com/admin interface from now on, they'll automatically be routed to the correct instance's administrative interface and can moderate submissions for that instance.

Getting Help

You can ask questions about setting up multiple instances or about anything else related to YouTube Direct in our YouTube API Developer's Forum.