Serverless on Sander Knape

A Serverless Payment Workflow using AWS Lambda and the AWS CDK

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:38:12 +0200

Serverless technology is getting more popular by the day. More and more people are starting to experiment with it and learn for which use cases it can add value. In this blog post I share an example of what a fully Serverless workflow can achieve.

For a while now I’ve been curious how one would implement a payment workflow on a website. I was aware that platforms like Stripe, Adyen and Mollie exist, but I never knew how much work would be required to set up a fully functioning workflow. I therefore decided to give it a try using nothing but Serverless technology.

Building a static serverless website using S3 and CloudFront

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 19:25:02 +0200

Hosting static websites is great. As they only contain static assets to be downloaded by the visitor’s browser - think HTML, CSS, Javascript, Fonts, images - no server-side code such as Java or PHP needs to be run. They’re therefore typically faster to load than dynamic websites, they have a smaller attack surface, and are easier to cache for even better performance.

That is why some time ago I moved this blog from a Wordpress installation hosted on EC2 to a static website. As I was already in AWS, and I knew that S3 + CloudFront was a popular choice for hosting static websites, I decided to host my blog in S3 with CloudFront in front of it as the CDN.

Building serverless applications with the AWS CDK - and testing them locally

Fri, 31 May 2019 16:35:02 +0200

The AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is a new framework for defining Infrastructure as Code (IaC) by AWS. It allows you to write IaC in a set of different languages. At the moment the following languages are supported: Javascript, Typescript, Python, Java, .NET. Support for other languages is coming.

Of course, other methods like CloudFormation and Terraform already exist to write IaC. Using these tools you write declarative code in YAML, JSON or the Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL) in a mostly declarative state. These tools will also support some basic operators such as if-statements and for-loops. Especially HCL has many of these capabilities with the latest 0.12.0 release. However, it will always be different from using a “real” programming language. And it requires you to use a new tool, instead of using a language you already know.

The hidden challenges of Serverless: from VM to function

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 12:29:02 +0200

Serverless is a relatively new term. It’s a software development paradigm where the entire concept of a “server” is abstracted away from the development process. You essentially only use managed services that handle scaling, and you pay only for what you use. You no longer need to think about operating systems, security patches, scaling configuration and more. All this is handled for you behind the scenes. The most well-known example is AWS Lambda, though as we will see in this blog post, serverless is much more than that.

Comparing AWS SAM with the Serverless framework

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 20:39:02 +0200

Serverless applications are everywhere these days. Having been introduced some years ago with the introduction of AWS Lambda, today serverless is much more then Function as a Service (FaaS). AWS is even starting to use the term in their products: at AWS re:Invent 2017 “Aurora Serverless” was introduced, a fully managed RDMS database.

How do you build such applications? Given that you properly like the Infrastructure as Code mindset as much as I do, the question is how to properly specify serverless applications provisioned in AWS in code. Two main options are out there: the Serverless Framework and AWS SAM. Both frameworks allow you to make it easier to build serverless applications.

Creating a serverless API using AWS API Gateway and DynamoDB

Sat, 14 Oct 2017 14:54:02 +0200

AWS API Gateway is a managed service from Amazon Web Services that allows you to easily create an API endpoint. An incoming request can either be forwarded to an HTTP endpoint, can invoke a Lambda function, or connect to an AWS service. Arguably, the Lambda integration is most commonly used as it allows you to invoke a piece of code without managing a server or operating system (thus, combined with API Gateway, creating a serverless api). A common use case is to store and retrieve data to/from a database.

Using pre-signed URLs to upload a file to a private S3 bucket

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:12:02 +0200

I’ve written about serverless architectures before (a serverless website in S3 and dynamic image generation with Lambda). I strongly believe in this notion as it minimizes required maintenance and makes the initial setup much easier. Of course, there is no silver bullet for every problem but use cases definitely exist where a serverless architecture makes a lot of sense.

One such use case for serverless is a small piece of functionality that you just need to run. Somewhere. You want to care as little as possible about this somewhere because the functionality is so small that pretty much any work you put into the somewhere is more than the time you spend on the actual functionality.

Building a serverless website in AWS

Mon, 01 May 2017 19:25:02 +0200

Maintaining a web server for your website is not ideal. It’s tedious, takes a lot of time if done properly and distracts from what you really want to do: sell a product, share information, e.t.c. The more time and money you spend on the platform, the less is available to spend on the website and your core business. Unless you’re a hosting company of course, but then this blog post isn’t really for you.

Dynamic image generation with AWS API Gateway and Lambda

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:49:02 +0200

The combination of API Gateway and Lambda is very powerful. It allows you to build some complex functionalities without maintaining any virtual machines yourself. Lambda can be hooked up to many other (AWS) Services including DynamoDB, Kinesis and S3. This paradigm, better known as serverless, is truly upcoming for years now and its certainly time to jump on the bandwagon if you haven’t done so already.

One of the better-known use cases of AWS Lambda is the generation of thumbnail images as images are inserted into S3. In this blog post we will go one step further and generate images based on the URL and return the image as a binary through API Gateway. The number of possibilities this unlocks are pretty much countless, including the generation of charts, bar codes, dynamic icons and much more.