Question: My project structure looks like 

```
flask-appengine-template/
                        docs/
                        licenses/
                        src/
                            application/
                                        static/
                                        templates/
                                        models.py
                                        settings.py
                                        urls.py
                                        views.py
                                        english.txt
                        libs/
                            bs4/
                         app.yaml
                         src.py

```

in my `views.py`, I have a function that reads the file `english.txt`

```
      for words in open('english.txt', 'r').readlines():
            stopwords.append(words.strip())

```

When I run this on `local environment`, I see error in logs as 

```
(<type 'exceptions.IOError'>, IOError(13, 'file not accessible'), <traceback object at 0x10c457560>)

```

How do I read this file in Google App Engine?

Answer: 
If english.txt is just a list of words, I suggest converting the list of words to a python list, so you can just import it.

If english.txt has more complex data, move it to bigtable or other database available to your app.

AppEngine is a very crippled environment compared to a standard VPS, I tend to avoid functions that operates over the underlying OS like `open()`.
You'll need to use os.path to get the proper reference to the file path, something along the lines of:

```
def read_words():
    import os.path
    folder = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
    file_path = os.path.join(folder, 'english.txt')
    for words in open(file_path, 'r').readlines():
        stopwords.append(words.strip())

```

Hope that helps!