A compelling introduction to serverless deployments using Claudia.js.
First the buzzwords: Serverless computing. AWS Lambda. API Gateway. Node.js. Microservices. Cloud-hosted functions. That's an impressive-sounding list, but what's the point? Beyond the buzzwords are real benefits like fast design-to-deployment times, low hosting costs, and efficient scaling and application management, along with real technologies that deliver them.
Serverless Applications with Node.js walks you through building serverless apps on AWS using JavaScript. Inside, you'll create a full project designed to help you understand and apply general serverless design principles and concepts. Along the way, you'll also discover what Claudia brings to the table as you build and deploy a scalable event-based serverless application that is fully integrated with AWS services including Lambda and API Gateway. You'll learn to simplify the design and development process so you can focus on getting your application deployed as fast as possible without sacrificing quality. Plus, you'll learn how to migrate your existing Express apps to serverless!
Table of Contents takes you straight to the bookdetailed table of contents
Part 1: Serverless Pizzeria
1 Introduction to serverless with Claudia
1.1 Servers and washing machines
1.2 The core concepts
1.3 How does serverless work?
1.4 Serverless in practice
1.4.1 Aunt Maria’s serverless pizzeria
1.4.2 A common approach
1.4.3 Serverless approach
1.5 Serverless infrastructure — AWS
1.6 What is Claudia, and how does it fit?
1.7 When and where should you use it?
1.8 Summary
2 Building your first serverless API
2.1 Assembling pizza ingredients: Building the API
2.1.1 Which pizza can I GET?
2.1.2 Structuring your API
2.1.3 POSTing an order
2.2 How Claudia deploys your API
2.3 Traffic control: How API Gateway works
2.4 When a serverless API is not the solution
2.5 Taste it!
2.5.1 Exercise
2.5.2 Solution
2.6 Summary
3 Asynchronous work is easy, we Promise()
3.1 Storing the orders
3.2 Promising to deliver in less than 30 minutes!
3.3 Trying out your API
3.4 Getting orders from the database
3.5 Taste it!
3.5.1 Exercise
3.5.2 Solution
3.6 Summary
4 Pizza delivery: Connecting an external service
4.1 Connecting to an external service
4.2 Connecting to the delivery API
4.2.1 The Some Like It Hot Delivery API
4.2.2 Creating your first delivery request
4.3 Potential issues with async communication
4.3.1 Forgetting to return a promise
4.3.2 Not passing the value from the promise
4.3.3 Not wrapping the external service in a promise
4.3.4 Timeout issues with long async operations
4.4 Taste it!
4.4.1 Exercise
4.4.2 Solution
4.5 Summary
5 Houston, we have a problem!
5.1 Debugging a serverless app
5.2 Debugging your Lambda function
5.3 X-Ray your app
5.4 Taste it!
5.4.1 Exercise
5.4.2 Solution
5.5 Summary
6 Level up your API
6.1 Serverless authentication and authorization
6.2 Creating user and identity pools
6.2.1 Controlling API access with Cognito
6.3 Taste it!
6.3.1 Exercise
6.3.2 Solution
6.4 Summary
7 Working with files
7.1 Storing static files in a serverless application
7.2 Generating thumbnails
7.2.1 Deploying your S3 function
7.3 Taste it!
7.3.1 Exercise
7.3.2 Solution
7.4 End of part 1: Special exercise
7.4.1 Advanced task
7.5 Summary
Part 2: Let’s Talk
8 When pizza is one message away: Chatbots
8.1 Pizza ordering beyond the browser
8.2 Hello from Facebook Messenger
8.3 What kinds of pizzas do you have?
8.4 Speeding up the deployment
8.5 Messenger templates
8.6 How does Claudia Bot Builder work?
8.7 Taste it!
8.7.1 Exercise
8.7.2 Solution
8.8 Summary
9 Typing… Async and delayed responses
9.1 Making chatbots interactive
9.1.1 Click to order: Answering a postback
9.2 Making the chatbot structure more scalable
9.3 Connecting your chatbot to the DynamoDB database
9.4 Getting the user’s location from the chatbot
9.5 Scheduling a delivery
9.6 Small talk: Integrating simple NLP
9.7 Taste it!
9.7.1 Exercise
9.7.2 Solution
9.7.3 Advanced exercise
9.8 Summary
10 Jarvis, I mean Alexa, order me a pizza
10.1 Can’t talk right now: Sending an SMS with Twilio
10.1.1 An SMS pizza list
10.1.2 Ordering a pizza
10.2 Hey Alexa!
10.2.1 Anatomy of an Alexa skill
10.2.2 Preparing the skill
10.2.3 Ordering pizza with Alexa
10.3 Taste it!
10.3.1 Exercise
10.3.2 Solution
10.4 End of part 2: Special exercise
10.5 Summary
Part 3: Next Steps
11 Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3
11.1 Testing server-hosted and serverless applications
11.2 How to approach testing serverless applications
11.3 Preparation
11.4 Unit tests
11.5 Mocking your serverless functions
11.6 Integration tests
11.7 Other types of automated testing
11.8 A step beyond: Writing testable serverless functions
11.9 Taste it!
11.9.1 Exercise
11.9.2 Solution
11.10 Summary
12 Paying for pizza
12.1 Payment transactions
12.1.1 Implementing an online payment
12.2 Implementing your payment service
12.3 Could someone hack your payment service?
12.3.1 Standards
12.3.2 Competence
12.4 Taste it!
12.4.1 Exercise
12.4.2 Solution
12.5 Summary
13 Migrating your existing Express.js app to AWS Lambda
13.1 Uncle Roberto’s taxi application
13.2 Running an Express.js application in AWS Lambda
13.2.1 Proxy integration
13.2.2 How serverless-express works
13.3 Serving static content
13.4 to MongoDB
13.4.1 Using a managed MongoDB database with your serverless Express.js app
13.5 Limitations of serverless Express.js applications
13.6 Taste it!
13.6.1 Exercise
13.6.2 Solution
13.7 Summary
14 Migrating to serverless
14.1 Analyzing your current serverless application
14.2 Migrating your existing application to serverless
14.3 Embrace the platform
14.3.1 Serving static files
14.3.2 Storing state
14.3.3 Logs
14.3.4 Continuous integration
14.3.5 Managing environments: Production and development
14.3.6 Sharing secrets
14.3.7 VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
14.4 Optimizing your application
14.4.1 Bundled or single-purpose functions
14.4.2 Choosing the right memory size for your Lambda function
14.5 Facing the challenges
14.5.1 Handling timeouts
14.5.2 Cold starts
14.5.3 DDoS attacks
14.5.4 Vendor lock-in
14.6 Taste it!
14.7 Summary
15 Real-world case studies
15.1 CodePen
15.1.1 Before serverless
15.1.2 Serverless migration
15.1.3 Cost of the infrastructure
15.1.4 Testing and challenges
15.2 MindMup
15.2.1 Before serverless
15.2.2 Serverless migration
15.2.3 Cost of the infrastructure
15.2.4 Testing, logs, and challenges
15.3 Summary
Appendixes
Appendix A: A Installation and configuration
A.1 Installing Claudia
A.1.1 Configuring Claudia prerequisites
A.1.2 Creating an AWS profile and getting the keys
A.1.3 Installing Claudia API Builder
A.1.4 Installing Claudia Bot Builder
A.2 Installing the AWS CLI
Appendix B: B Facebook Messenger, Twilio, and Alexa configuration
B.1 Facebook Messenger setup
B.1.1 Creating a Facebook page
B.1.2 Creating a Facebook app
B.1.3 Creating a Facebook Messenger chatbot using Claudia Bot Builder
B.1.4 Enabling built-in NLP
B.2 Twilio setup
B.2.1 Creating a Twilio account
B.2.2 Getting a Twilio number
B.2.3 Setting up your Twilio Programmable SMS service
B.3 Alexa skill setup
Appendix C: C Stripe and MongoDB setup
C.1 Setting up your Stripe account and retrieving Stripe API keys
C.1.1 Creating a Stripe account
C.1.2 Getting your Stripe API keys
C.2 Installing and configuring MongoDB
C.2.1 Creating an account
C.2.2 Configuring your cluster
Appendix D: D The pizza recipe
About the Technology
Serverless computing services like AWS Lambda and API Gateway can be tedious to set up, aren't designed to work well with JavaScript and Node, and most of the quirks and gotchas aren't well documented. A new generation of serverless tools, including Claudia.js, make it radically easier to set up serverless web applications so you can focus on what your app does instead of meddling with infrastructure configuration and deployment. Claudia doesn't alter your project layout or abstract away the core AWS services; it just makes it easier to get started with them!What's inside
- Creating a serverless API using AWS Lambda and Claudia.js
- Doing authentication and database storage in a serverless way
- Creating a chatbot for multiple platforms
- Building a voice assistant with Amazon Alexa
- Developing microservices with Node.js, AWS Lambda, S3, and more
About the reader
Written for beginner and intermediate web developers comfortable with JavaScript and Node.js. Some prior experience with AWS is required.About the authors
Slobodan Stojanović and Aleksandar Simović are core contributors to the Claudia.js project, the lead developers and maintainers of Claudia Bot Builder, and official AWS Serverless Heroes. They work closely with Claudia.js founder Gojko Adzic, and present serverless and Claudia.js at conferences and workshops.
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This book is really great for any newbie to the serverless paradigm.
The concepts of Serverless Architecture are presented clearly and realistically, also giving guidance when Serverless might not be the correct solutions.