Hands-On Serverless Computing

Build, run and orchestrate serverless applications using AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions

Kuldeep Chowhan

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781788836654
• eBook ISBN: 9781788834957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Operating Systems
• Index: Computer Science

Deploy functions efficiently using different cloud-based serverless offerings

Key Features

• Understand the concept of Function-as-a-Service
• Implement Serverless solutions using AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions
• Practical approach towards choosing the best tool for your serverless environment

Book Description

Serverless applications and architectures are gaining momentum and are increasingly being used by companies of all sizes. Serverless software takes care of many problems that developers face when running systems and servers, such as fault tolerance, centralized logging, horizontal scalability, and deployments.

You will learn how to harness serverless technology to rapidly reduce production time and minimize your costs, while still having the freedom to customize your code, without hindering functionality. Upon finishing the book, you will have the knowledge and resources to build your own serverless application hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, and will have experienced the benefits of event-driven technology for yourself.

This hands-on guide dives into the basis of serverless architectures and how to build them using Node.js as a programming language, Visual Studio Code for code editing, and Postman for quickly and securely developing applications without the hassle of configuring and maintaining infrastructure on three public cloud platforms.

What you will learn

• Understand the benefts of serverless computing and know when to use it
• Develop serverless applications on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
• Get to grips with Function as a Service (FaaS)
• Apply triggers to serverless functions
• Build event-driven apps using serverless frameworks
• Use the Node.js programming language to build serverless apps
• Use code editors, such as Visual Studio Code, as development environments
• Master the best development practices for creating scalable and practical solutions

Who this book is for

This book is targeted towards developers, system administrators or any stakeholder working in the Serverless environment and want to understand how functions work.

Basic idea of serverless architecture can be an added advantage

Development Environment, Tools, and SDKs

In this chapter, we will look at how to set up your development environment, which programming language to use, the tools that you can use, and the SDKs that are provided by AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud for developing serverless applications.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Development environment setup
• Tools
• SDKs from cloud providers

Development environment and tools

Let's look at the development environment and the tools that we will need to create and run the serverless applications that we will create in later chapters. We will be using Visual Studio Code for code editing, Node.js and JavaScript for writing our serverless applications, and we will use tools such as Postman to test our serverless applications. Let's start by looking at what Visual Studio Code is, the benefits it provides, its installation instructions, and the Visual Studio Code user interface.

Visual Studio Code

Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is a free, open source code editor that runs on all operating systems (macOS, Linux, and Windows). It supports development operations such as task running, debugging, and version control. It provides the tools developers will need for a code, build, and debug cycle, leaving more complex workflows to more fully featured IDEs.

Visual Studio Code is a lightning fast code editor, perfect for day-to-day use. With support for hundreds of languages, it aids productivity with auto-indentation, syntax highlighting, box-selection, bracket-matching, snippets, and more. It features intuitive keyboard shortcuts, easy customization of the editor using user-defined settings, and its community-contributed keyboard shortcut mappings will let you navigate your source code with ease. It also has built-in support for code completion—IntelliSense, navigation through UI, rich semantic code understanding, and code refactoring.

Debugging is often the feature that developers miss most in a leaner code editor experience, and with Visual Studio Code not only is it available, but it is very easy to debug your applications. Visual Studio Code has an interactive debugger, so you can inspect variables, step through source code, view call stacks, and execute commands in the console.

Visual Studio Code also integrates with scripting and build tools to perform common tasks, making everyday workflows easier and faster. It has support for Git so you can work with source control without leaving the editor, including committing changes to Git and viewing pending changes with diffs:

Let's have a look at the features of Visual Studio:

• IntelliSense: Go beyond syntax highlighting and auto-complete with IntelliSense, which provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
• Print statement debugging is a thing of the past: Debug code right from the editor. Either launch it or attach it to your running apps and debug with breakpoints, call stacks, and an interactive console.
• Git commands built-in: Working with Git and other SCM providers has never been easier. Review diffs, stage files, and make commits right from the editor. Push and pull from any hosted SCM service.
• Extensible and customizable: Visual Studio Code has many features out-of-the-box. It also let's you customize and extend Visual Studio Code in the form of plugins and settings configurations. You can find more information about Visual Studio Code and its extensibility at https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/whyvscode.

Visual Studio Code ships monthly releases (https://code.visualstudio.com/updates) and supports auto-update when a new release is available. If you're prompted, accept the newest update and it will be installed (you won't need to do anything else to get the latest update).

Setting up Visual Studio Code

Setting up Visual Studio Code is quick and easy. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight editor and can be run on most available hardware and platforms. I have listed the system requirements for Visual Studio Code in the following sections, which you can use to check whether your computer configuration will support running it.

Hardware

Visual Studio Code is a relatively small download, being less than 100 MB, and having a disk footprint of 200 MB. It is a lightweight editor that can be run easily on today's hardware.

Recommended CPU and memory:

• 1.6 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB of RAM

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Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright and Credits
• Dedication
• Packt Upsell
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Preface
• What is Serverless Computing?
• Development Environment, Tools, and SDKs
• Getting Started with AWS Lambda
• Triggers and Events for AWS Lambda
• Your First Serverless Application on AWS
• Serverless Orchestration on AWS
• Getting Started with Azure Functions
• Triggers and Bindings for Azure Functions
• Your First Serverless Application on Azure
• Getting Started with Google Cloud Functions
• Triggers and Events for Google Cloud Functions
• Your First Serverless Application on Google Cloud
• Reference Architecture for a Web App
• Reference Architecture for a Real-time File Processing
• Other Books You May Enjoy