The Rise of Serverless Architecture: A Game-Changer for Frontend Developers

The Contact Form Conundrum

Let’s consider a simple example: building a contact form on a portfolio site. Traditionally, you would create an API that connects to your preferred mail service provider and then set up a server to run the API. While this approach is valid, it’s often cost-ineffective and wasteful of server resources, especially for low-traffic sites. This is where serverless architecture comes into play.

What is Serverless, Anyway?

Serverless doesn’t mean there’s no server involved; it simply means that you’re leveraging a third-party service to manage and set up servers, allowing you to focus on writing autonomous functions. These functions, known as serverless functions, are only executed when there’s a request, and you’re only charged for the resources used during that period.

Building a Serverless Contact Form with Nuxt.js and Netlify Functions

To demonstrate the power of serverless functions, we’ll build a contact form using Nuxt.js and Netlify Functions. Our demo application will showcase how to create a seamless user experience while leveraging the benefits of serverless architecture.

Getting Started with Nuxt.js

First, we’ll create a new Nuxt.js application and select Chakra UI as our UI framework. We’ll also choose Axios as our Nuxt.js module. Once the application is set up, we’ll update the index.vue file to include our contact form.

<template>
  <div>
    <form @submit.prevent="sendContactToLambdaFunction">
      <label>Name:</label>
      <input type="text" v-model="name" />
      <br>
      <label>Email:</label>
      <input type="email" v-model="email" />
      <br>
      <label>Message:</label>
      <textarea v-model="message"></textarea>
      <br>
      <button type="submit">Send</button>
    </form>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      name: '',
      email: '',
      message: ''
    }
  },
  methods: {
    sendContactToLambdaFunction() {
      // Call Netlify function here
    }
  }
}
</script>

Introducing Netlify Functions

Netlify Functions provide a convenient way to deploy serverless Lambda functions without an AWS account. With Netlify, you can test your serverless functions locally using Netlify Dev. We’ll create a netlify.toml file to configure our project and then run a command to create our Netlify function.

[functions]
  contact-mail = "src/functions/contact-mail.js"

Setting Up Mailgun

To handle email sending, we’ll use Mailgun, which provides a sandbox domain for testing. We’ll install the necessary dependencies, including dotenv and mailgun-js, and create an .env file to store our environment variables.

npm install dotenv mailgun-js

The Contact-Mail Function

Our contact-mail.js function will handle the logic for sending emails. We’ll validate incoming requests, construct the email body, and pass it to Mailgun’s messages.send() method. Finally, we’ll return error or success messages from Mailgun.

import dotenv from 'dotenv';
import mg from 'ailgun-js';

dotenv.config();

const mailgun = mg({
  apiKey: process.env.MAILGUN_API_KEY,
  domain: process.env.MAILGUN_DOMAIN
});

export async function handler(event) {
  const { name, email, message } = event;

  try {
    const data = {
      from: email,
      to: '[email protected]',
      subject: `Message from ${name}`,
      text: message
    };

    const response = await mailgun.messages().send(data);
    return { statusCode: 200, body: 'Email sent successfully!' };
  } catch (error) {
    return { statusCode: 500, body: 'Error sending email!' };
  }
}

Testing and Deployment

We’ll test our application using Netlify Dev and then deploy it to Netlify. We’ll add environmental variables on Netlify and redeploy the app for the changes to take effect.

The Benefits of Serverless Architecture

In this tutorial, we’ve explored the benefits of serverless architecture, including:

• Cost-effectiveness: Only pay for the resources used during request execution.
• Scalability: Automatically scale to handle increased traffic.
• Ease of deployment: Focus on writing code, not managing servers.

To learn more, check out the official Netlify Functions docs and explore the source code for this project on GitHub: https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-name.