Serverless application development has become the latest buzzword, as it includes the use of cloud-based technology to manage different back-end functions of the application or website. As the developers choose this Serverless Application Development architecture, they can focus on the front end of the application or website without having to worry about different back-end functions.
What is serverless application development?
Serverless architecture refers to the cloud-native development model, which provides the developers with the opportunity to create and run apps without the need to manage the servers. Once you choose this Serverless Application Development architecture, though the app will run on the servers, AWS serverless performs the complete server management service.
Is serverless application development good for startups?
The Serverless Application Development architecture happens to be the perfect solution for startups. It provides the business owners with the opportunity to pay for the services once a specific event or user request gets triggered. Thus, the technical teams can reduce the idle time cost. Henceforth, they will not pay any extra money for the servers.
Henceforth, serverless application development is considered the best choice for startups, as they can hire fewer resources to maintain the project. Hence, they can place more emphasis on the promotion of the business’s core services.
Pros of serverless application development
The benefits of serverless application development are:
• Coding flexibility
• Enhanced scalability
• Allows quicker and smaller application release cycles.
• Enhanced developer productivity
• Quicker updates and deployments
• There is no need to manage and buy the backend systems and servers.
- Budget-friendly
How do I start serverless application development?
In this section, we will discuss the steps to setting up a serverless architecture. To start with, it is necessary to have the AWS account with aws.cli installed along with the latest version of node. Now, we will walk you through the installation process for serverless application development:
Serverless Framework installation: In the beginning, you need to execute the command, npm install serverless -g to install the serverless framework on the system through npm.
Creating the project:
Now, you need to develop a Hello project, with the template created within the serverless command line tool. It helps create the two files serverless.yml and handlers.js. serverless.yml helps configure the lambda endpoints and the events for the AWS Lambda Development. The majority of the configuration gets conducted here.
AWS credentials setup
If you have not used the aws-cli before, they should make sure to create the credentials, so that the serverless framework gets connected to the AWS environment. After this, they need the permission of the AWS user for the deployment of the serverless application.
You should make sure that the potential user has the permissions AWSLambdaRole, AWSLambdaExecute, AWSLambdaRole, AWSLambdaFullAccess, and AWSCloudFormationReadOnlyAccess.
Now, you should generate the access key for the user in the security credentials and save those credentials.
Serverless configuration
You are ready to use the serverless framework so that the credentials are saved in a manner that the aws-cli will understand the execution of the serverless config credentials –provider aws –key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY –secret YOUR_ACCESS_SECRET command.
Lambda Function Deployment
The final step involves running the ‘sls deploy’ with –verbose flag (which will output full logs of your deployment) command for AWS Lambda Deployment.
In the output, it will come up with the latest CloudFormation Stack and code bundle, performing the below functions:
- Code uploading to S3
- Creation of lambda function from the specific code
- API gateway api creation along with the creation of the endpoint, pointing to the new function
- Creation of the Cloudwatch log group for the function
- It is possible to check out the files, which get uploaded to sS3, present within the serverless folder, created by the deploy command.
The output generated from the above command prints the deployed function’s endpoint API gateway. All you need to do is open the output in your browser and check if the Lambda function is working properly.
