Serverless Workshop

This repo will teach you the core concepts of serverless and walk through a variety of ready to deploy serverless architectures

If you'd like the serverless training for your team, get in touch with me.

Table of Contents

• Using this repo
• Workshop Lessons
  • Core Concepts
  • Events
• Helpful Tools
• Prerequisites & Setup Steps
• Troubleshooting & FAQ

Using this repo

After following the prerequisite setup steps, work from the lessons folders.

If you get stuck or want to look ahead checkout the lessons-code-complete directory for the completed code.

Repo directory structure:

• /lessons - ✅ work from these files!
• /lessons-code-complete - 💡Complete lesson answers
• /_instructor - 🙈 ignore these, unless updating lessons

Workshop Lessons

Core Concepts

Lesson	Final Code
1 Http Hello World Deploying Your First Endpoint	Complete Code
2 Http Dynamic Content Dynamic Content in Functions	Complete Code
3 Http Post With Cors Deploying an http POST endpoint with CORS support	Complete Code
4 Using Env Vars Using environment variables	Complete Code
5 Using Serverless Variable Syntax Using Serverless variable syntax	Complete Code
6 Using Addition Resources Defining additional resources	Complete Code
7 Using Serverless Plugins Extending Serverless Functionality with plugins	Complete Code
8 Using Multiple Stages Deploying to Multiple Stages	Complete Code

Events

Lesson	Final Code
Dynamodb Streams Using DynamoDB streams	Complete Code
Kinesis Basic Simple Kinesis Example	Complete Code
Kinesis Using Kinesis as an Event Source	Complete Code
S3 Triggering Lambda functions from s3 events	Complete Code
Schedule Triggering functions via cron schedules	Complete Code
Sns Using AWS SNS as event source	Complete Code
Sns Advanced Using External SNS Topics Example	Complete Code
Sns Basic Basic SNS Example	Complete Code
Step Functions Using AWS Step Functions	Complete Code

Helpful Tools

• PostMan - desktop app for quick & easy endpoint testing
• NVM - Node version manager
• yaml validator
• yaml linter & validator

Prerequisites & Setup Steps

1. Install the latest LTS version of Node. How to install Node.

2. Verify you have git on your machine

   Most machines come pre-loaded with git. 🎉

   To verify you have git, open up your terminal and run:

   which git

   This should return a path of where git is installed. If the command returns git not found, we will need to install git on your machine.

3. Setup a AWS account. 

   If you don't already have an AWS account, let's get one setup.

   Click here to setup a free AWS account

   It's recommended to not use pre-existing AWS account running production code.

   Make sure you add valid billing information and verify your account.

4. Install serverless CLI

   Open up your terminal and run:

   npm install serverless -g

5. Connect the serverless CLI with your AWS account credentials. 

   See the docs or watch the video

6. Verify the Serverless CLI works on your machine

   Open up your terminal and run:

   serverless --help
   

   This should return the list of commands from the CLI tool.

   Now let's verify your AWS account is correctly configured. Open up your terminal and run the following commands:

   # create a test project
   serverless create --template aws-nodejs --path my-test-service
   # move into the `my-test-service` directory
   cd my-test-service
   # deploy the test service to verify AWS credentials
   serverless deploy

   This should deploy the test service into AWS. If you encounter errors, please ping me and we can get them sorted out.

Bonus setup:

• If you have an IDE/editor with YAML linting it will be helpful. (like this atom plugin, or vs code plugin)
• Install postman for quick & easy testing of endpoints we deploy
• It's also recommended that you use nvm (node version manager) just in case you need to change versions of node for the workshop.

Troubleshooting & FAQ

• I don't see my [insert AWS service XYZ] in the AWS console

  This happens to the best of us. Make sure you are in the correct region in the AWS console. You can get the current region of your service by typing sls info into the terminal.

• serverless deploy hangs

  This typically happens when aws credentials are misconfigured. Double check your ~/.aws/credentials file and make sure the values are correct.

• Y A M L Exception

  check your yaml indentation syntax. yaml validator | yaml validator two

• Unable to import module 'handler': Error at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:469:15)

  This error means lambda can't find your included node_modules. Make sure you npm install in your project and install all your dependancies locally before running sls deploy

• Unable to delete bucket error.

  Your s3 bucket in question might have files in it. You will need to head into AWS cloudformation in the console and manually delete the bucket and cloudformation stack.

• Stack [xyz] cannot be deleted while in status UPDATE_ROLLBACK_COMPLETE_CLEANUP_IN_PROGRESS

  This happens when cloudformation gets stuck in a weird state. You might need to log into the AWS console, head into cloudformation and delete the stack from the UI