An example serverless application project: a RESTful API backed by DynamoDB.

Components include multiple AWS Lambda functions, Amazon API Gateway, and an Amazon DynamoDB table. The project uses the Lambda Node.js 6.10 runtime, and generally follows the ECMAScript 6 standard. The AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) is used to deploy the project.

• Install the AWS CLI, or update the version you have installed previously (some commands used here may not exist in older versions of the AWS CLI).

• Create an IAM user with admin access. The IAM user you associate with the AWS CLI should have admin permissions, including the ability to create IAM roles.

• Configure the AWS CLI to use the admin user

To begin your deployment, either download a zip file of the code from GitHub or clone the GitHub repository with the command:

  git clone https://github.com/awslabs/startup-kit-serverless-workload.git

You can use the installation script to deploy the app, or continue to the manual deployment section to deploy it manually.

The installation script (install.sh) is in the code you downloaded or cloned from this GitHub repository. First make sure the file has execution permission. You can grant the file execution permission by running the following command:

   
   chmod +x install.sh

Then you can run the installation script:

   
   ./install.sh

That's it! Your Startup Kit Serverless Workload is now fully deployed and ready to be tested. To test it, try the curl commands output by the installation script.

NOTE: if you test with a front end, the API should work fine with a mobile client such as iOS or Android or when called from another server, but at present will not work with a web front end due to CORS issues. To enable CORS on API Gateway when deploying with SAM, include a Swagger file as show in the example https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model/tree/master/examples/2016-10-31/api_swagger_cors.

To understand the steps involved in an AWS SAM deployment, deploy the workload manually. Once you have a S3 bucket in place to hold deployment artifacts, the workflow for using AWS SAM primarily consists of using just two AWS CLI commands.

In the AWS Region where you plan to do your deployment, be sure you have an existing Amazon S3 bucket in which SAM can put the deployment artifacts, or create a new bucket using the following AWS CLI command:

  aws s3 mb s3://<your-bucket-name>.  
  

Next, to deploy the project for the first time with SAM, and for each subsequent code update, run both of the following AWS CLI commands in order. For the first command, package, replace the s3-bucket argument with the name of your S3 bucket. For the second command, deploy, replace the template-file argument with the full path to your output template file.

aws cloudformation package \
--template-file serverless.cfn.yml \
--output-template-file serverless-xfm.cfn.yml \
--s3-bucket <your-bucket-name>

aws cloudformation deploy \
--template-file <path-to-file/serverless-xfm.cfn.yml> \
--stack-name StartupKitServerless \
--capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

First get the invoke URL of your API. Do this by going to the API Gateway console, selecting StartupKitServerless, then Stages in the left navigation panel, and finally Stage in the list of stages. The invoke URL should now appear at the top of the right hand panel.

Begin testing by adding some TODO items using the create API. This may be accomplished using the following command:

   curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"todo_id": "1001", "active": true, "description": "What TODO next?"}' https://<invoke-URL-for-your-API>/todo/new
   

To fetch the active TODO items you created, execute the following command:

   curl https://<invoke-URL-for-your-API>/todo/active

Similar commands can be used to test all of the other API calls.

NOTE: if you test with a front end, the API should work fine with a mobile client such as iOS or Android or when called from another server, but at present will not work with a web front end due to CORS issues. To enable CORS on API Gateway when deploying with SAM, include a Swagger file as show in the example https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model/tree/master/examples/2016-10-31/api_swagger_cors.