How to create a simple AWS Lamda function with Typescript.

A simple tutorial running over how to deploy a Lambda function along with DynamoDB
2023awsdynamoDbserverless
Updated 5 months ago Published 4 years ago
Over the course of this tutorial you will be deploying a set of simple todo Lambda function, you will be deploying 3 separate artefacts.
  • Create endpoint
  • Get all todo's endpoint
  • Get by id todo's endpoint

What will we be working with

AWS Lambda is a service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed and scales automatically, from a few requests per day to thousands per second.
AWS DynamoDB is a key-value and document database that delivers single-digit millisecond performance at any scale. It’s a fully managed NoSQL database database with built-in security, backup and restore, and in-memory caching for internet-scale applications.

Step one - Install the Serverless framework

Install the Serverless Framework via npm which was already installed when you installed Node.js.
Open up a terminal and type npm install -g serverless to install Serverless.
npm install -g serverless
Once the installation process is done you can verify that Serverless is installed successfully by running the following command in your terminal:
serverless
To see which version of serverless you have installed run:

serverless --version

Step two - Install the serverless framework

Now that you have Serverless installed you will need to crate a new set of access credentials, These credentials will be used to push your local project into your AWS account.
Firstly visit https://console.aws.amazon.com/
Search for IAM (Identity & access management)
Click on the users link
Click on your own user
Click on the 'Security credential's' tab
Click on the 'Security credential's' tab and then on 'Create access key'
You should now make a copy of both your access key id and secret access key.
Now you have a valid security key you can use to request against your AWS account.

Step three - Configure your new AWS account profile

Now that you have you acess key and secret you need to add the crential to your local machine as a new profile.
You can simply create a new aws proflile via the command line. For the duration of this tutorial we will be using a profile named 'tutorial'.
aws configure --profile tutorial
You will then be prompted to enter your access key id and secret.
Also set your aws region to `eu-west-1`
└─[$] <> aws configure --profile tutorial
AWS Access Key ID [None]: ****
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: ****
Default region name [None]: eu-west-1
Default output format [None]:
CONGRATS, You can now deploy to AWS.

Step four - Build and deploy the sample project

Build and start the Lambda locally
cd packages/ecom-lamda-typescript/
yarn install 
yarn build 
sls offline start
This will start the Lambda locally, There will be three endpoints started as part of this application. 
POST /todo
GET /todo
GET /todo/{id}
This repo contains a bundled postman collection, You can download this export and import in into your local instance of postman.
It is Available here
You can create an new todo item with postman 
POST
URL
http://localhost:3001/todo
BODY
{
	"text" : "This is the todo text"
}
You can request all todo entries 
GET
URL
http://localhost:3001/todo
You can request a single todo entry. 
GET
URL
http://localhost:3001/todo/{ID}

Step five - Deploying the Serverless application.

Now that you have successfully run the Lambda function locally you should be able to deploy it to the AWS account you configured in step 3.
We will start by rebuilding the application to ensure that the deployed artifact contains all of the latest updates. 
yarn build
Once you have build the latest version of the application you can deploy you application via the Serverless CLI.
You will need to ensure that you use the `tutorial` profile that you created previously.

export AWS_PROFILE="tutorial" && sls deploy
If all goes well then the Serverless framework will provide you will a list of all of the deployed endpoints and some additional metadata. 
└─[$] <git:(master)> sls deploy --profile tutorieg
Serverless: Packaging service...
Serverless: Excluding development dependencies...
Serverless: Service files not changed. Skipping deployment...
Service Information
service: sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb
stage: dev
region: eu-west-1
stack: sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb-dev
resources: 25
api keys:
  None
endpoints:
  POST - https://2vwe9db8eg.execute-api.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dev/todo
  GET - https://2vwe9db8eg.execute-api.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dev/todo
  GET - https://2vwe9db8eg.execute-api.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dev/todo/{id}
functions:
  create: sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb-dev-create
  getAll: sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb-dev-getAll
  getById: sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb-dev-getById
layers:
  None
Serverless: Run the "serverless" command to setup monitoring, troubleshooting and testing.

Step six - The AWS Serverless dashboard.

Now that your Serverless functions have been deployed you probably want to start interacting with them ?
Conveniently AWS provides a dashboard for all of their services.
We will start by once again going back to [https://console.aws.amazon.com/](https://console.aws.amazon.com/).
Search for Lambda
You will now be presented with all of the functions that were deployed as part of the Serverless deployment process, For now you will navigate to the `sls-typescript-todo-api-with-dynamodb-dev-create` function.
This panel contains of the information relevent to this particular function, When a lamda function is deployed it is assigned a random DNS name that anyone can access to trigger the lamda funcion. All traffic in and out of lamda functions is proxied through `Api Gateway`.
As such click on the `Api Gateway` asset linked with the `Designer` panel.
Below the primary designer panel you will now see the `Api Gateway` Metadata. Here is a public link for the lamda function you have just deployed.
Much like when you ran the lamda locally you can now POST to this endpoint to create a new TODO.
Please note your DNS name will be different. 
POST
URL
https://2vwe9db8eg.execute-api.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dev/todo
BODY
{
	"text" : "This is the todo text"
}

Step seven - But wait where are we storing all of the data

You may be wondering, Where the hell are we saving and fetching the todo entries.
And the answer to that is we are storing all of the records in `DynamoDB`, The Serverless framework allows you to declare and create `DynamoDb` tables when deploying your Serverless functions.
We have declared a basic `DynamoDb` table within a separate CloudFormation file that is imported by the core `serverless.yaml` file and invoked when deploying the declared application.
The declaration and configuration of a `DynamoDb` table is beyond the scope of this tutorial but you can view the configuration by going to the below file. 
./packages/ecom-lamda-typescript/serverless-paritals/dynamodb-todo.yaml
Much like with the deployed Lambda functions you can view, edit and update `DynamoDb` tabled using the AWS console.
We will start by once again going back to https://console.aws.amazon.com/
Search for dynamodb
You should now see a list of all of the DynamoDB tables that are available to you. You can click on our tutorial table.
Now you can manage the deployed table, You can query and update all of the record within the database from the `DynamoDB` table.