Unlock the Power of Serverless Applications
Are you tired of managing high-maintenance servers for your web applications? Do you want to focus on driving business value for your users instead of worrying about administrative tasks? Look no further than the serverless stack!
What is Serverless?
The serverless stack is a framework that allows you to build both microservice and full-stack applications without the hassle of provisioning and maintaining servers. With serverless, you only pay for the exact resources you consume, reducing overhead and costs.
How Does it Work?
Serverless code is a stateless function triggered by events, such as network requests. Each function call runs in a new container instance, automatically triggered by the cloud provider. This means you don’t have to worry about scaling, security updates, or technical details – the cloud provider handles it all.
Advantages of Serverless
- Scale on-demand based on incoming requests
- Handle concurrent requests with ease
- Focus on core application maintenance and feature implementation
- Faster deployment cycles with a single command
- Abstraction for cloud infrastructure
- Pay only for the resources you consume
Overcoming Cold Starts
One potential issue with serverless applications is cold starts, which can lead to timeout issues. To solve this, you can cache event calls, use open-source libraries like serverless-webpack to optimize your functions, and leverage techniques like keeping your container instance running for a short time.
Building a Serverless Microservice-Based Application
To get started with serverless, you’ll need Node.js and npm installed on your machine, as well as a basic knowledge of using the command line. Then, you can install the Serverless CLI and start building your application.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to build a serverless, microservice-based application using Node.js. We’ll cover setting up local development, creating a new directory, installing dependencies, and configuring our application.
Prerequisites
- Node.js and npm installed on your machine
- Basic knowledge of using the command line
- Serverless CLI installed
Getting Started
To begin, create a new directory and install the Serverless CLI. Then, set up your application by creating a new file called serverless.yml. This file will configure your entire application, including the services you want to add and how to configure the path to your routes and controllers.
Fleshing Out Your Application
Next, create a handler.js file that contains the actual functions that will be deployed to your cloud provider. Then, install the necessary dependencies, including serverless-offline and serverless-dotenv.
Configuring Your Application
After that, create a package.json file and add the necessary dependencies. Then, configure your serverless.yml file to include the plugins and services you need.
Writing Code
Finally, start writing code! Create a dbConfigs.js file to connect to your database, a product.js file to handle CRUD operations, and a Controller/product.js file to handle the core logic of your app.
Testing Your API
Once you’ve finished writing code, test your API using a tool like POSTMAN. Create a new product, fetch all products, and fetch a product by its ID.
Conclusion
Serverless applications are here to stay. With the serverless stack, you can write and deploy functions with a single command, and they’re live. Although there are some pre-configuration options we didn’t cover in this tutorial, you’ve successfully built a minimal, scalable microservice-based application leveraging serverless technologies.
Try this setup out and let us know if you have any questions or feedback!