Introduction to Fn with Go

Fn is a lightweight Docker-based serverless functions platform you can run on your laptop, server, or cloud. In this introductory tutorial we'll walk through developing a function using the Go programming language (without installing any Go tools!) and deploying that function to a local Fn server. We'll also learn about the core Fn concepts like applications and triggers.

Before you Begin

Set aside about 15 minutes to complete this tutorial.
Make sure Fn server is up and running by completing the Install and Start Fn Tutorial.
- Make sure you have set your Fn context registry value for local development. (for example, "fndemouser". See here.)

As you make your way through this tutorial, look out for this icon. Whenever you see it, it's time for you to perform an action.

Your First Function

Now that Fn is up and running, let's start with a very simple "hello world" function written in Go. Don't worry, you don't need to know Go! In fact you don't even need to have Go installed on your development machine as Fn provides the necessary Go compiler and tools as a Docker container. Let's walk through your first function to become familiar with the process and how Fn supports development.

Create your Function

In the terminal type the following:

fn init --runtime go gofn

The output will be

Creating function at: ./gofn
Function boilerplate generated.
func.yaml created.

The fn init command creates an simple function with a bit of boilerplate to get you started. The --runtime option is used to indicate that the function we're going to develop will be written in Go. A number of other runtimes are also supported. Fn creates the simple function along with several supporting files in the /gofn directory.

Review your Function File

With your function created change into the /gofn directory.

cd gofn

Now get a list of the directory contents.

ls

func.go func.yaml go.mod

The func.go file which contains your actual Go function is generated along with several supporting files. To view your Go function type:

cat func.go

package main

import (
	"context"
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"io"

	fdk "github.com/fnproject/fdk-go"
)

func main() {
	fdk.Handle(fdk.HandlerFunc(myHandler))
}

type Person struct {
	Name string `json:"name"`
}

func myHandler(ctx context.Context, in io.Reader, out io.Writer) {
	p := &Person{Name: "World"}
	json.NewDecoder(in).Decode(p)
	msg := struct {
		Msg string `json:"message"`
	}{
		Msg: fmt.Sprintf("Hello %s", p.Name),
	}
	json.NewEncoder(out).Encode(&msg)
}

This function looks for JSON input in the form of {"name": "Bob"}. If this JSON example is passed to the function, the function returns {"message":"Hello Bob"}. If no JSON data is found, the function returns {"message":"Hello World"}.

Understanding func.yaml

The fn init command generated a func.yaml function configuration file. Let's look at the contents:

cat func.yaml

schema_version: 20180708
name: gofn
version: 0.0.1
runtime: go
entrypoint: ./func

The generated func.yaml file contains metadata about your function and declares a number of properties including:

schema_version--identifies the version of the schema for this function file. Essentially, it determines which fields are present in func.yaml.
name--the name of the function. Matches the directory name.
version--automatically starting at 0.0.1
runtime--the name of the runtime/language which was set based on the value set in --runtime.
entrypoint--the name of the executable to invoke when your function is called, in this case ./func

There are other user specifiable properties but these will suffice for this example. Note that the name of your function is taken from the containing folder name. We'll see this come into play later on.

Other Function Files

The fn init command generated one other file.

go.mod -- the Go modules file which specifies all the dependencies for your function.

Deploy Your First Function

With the gofn directory containing func.go and func.yaml you've got everything you need to deploy the function to Fn server. This server could be running in the cloud, in your datacenter, or on your local machine like we're doing here.

Check your Context

Make sure your context is set to default and you are using a demo user. Use the fn list contexts command to check.

fn list contexts

CURRENT	NAME    PROVIDER    API URL                 REGISTRY
*       default	default     http://localhost:8080   fndemouser

If your context is not configured, please see the context installation instructions before proceeding. Your context determines where your function is deployed.

Create an App

Next, functions are grouped together into an application. The application acts as the main organizing structure for multiple functions. To create an application type the following:

fn create app goapp

A confirmation is returned:

Successfully created app:  goapp

Now goapp is ready for functions to be deployed to it.

Deploy your Function to your App

Deploying your function is how you publish your function and make it accessible to other users and systems. To see the details of what is happening during a function deploy, use the --verbose switch. The first time you build a function of a particular language it takes longer as Fn downloads the necessary Docker images. The --verbose option allows you to see this process.

In your terminal type the following:

fn --verbose deploy --app goapp --local

You should see output similar to:

Deploying gofn to app: goapp
Bumped to version 0.0.2
Building image fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2
FN_REGISTRY:  fndemouser
Current Context:  default
Sending build context to Docker daemon   5.12kB
Step 1/10 : FROM fnproject/go:dev as build-stage
 ---> 96c8fb94a8e1
Step 2/10 : WORKDIR /function
 ---> Using cache
 ---> bee171e861d4
Step 3/10 : WORKDIR /go/src/func/
 ---> Using cache
 ---> d0102d3148a1
Step 4/10 : ENV GO111MODULE=on
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 22ecbf50c559
Step 5/10 : COPY . .
 ---> 0a2992d2d99a
Step 6/10 : RUN cd /go/src/func/ && go build -o func
 ---> Running in e480baa937d4
go: finding github.com/fnproject/fdk-go latest
go: downloading github.com/fnproject/fdk-go v0.0.0-20190716163646-1458ca84e01d
Removing intermediate container e480baa937d4
 ---> d8cc615e1e64
Step 7/10 : FROM fnproject/go
 ---> bc635796c9df
Step 8/10 : WORKDIR /function
 ---> Using cache
 ---> b853b5d6b840
Step 9/10 : COPY --from=build-stage /go/src/func/func /function/
 ---> Using cache
 ---> ee3af55a0670
Step 10/10 : ENTRYPOINT ["./func"]
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 3e41594de5c8
Successfully built 3e41594de5c8
Successfully tagged fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2

Updating function gofn using image fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2...
Successfully created function: gofn with fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2

All the steps to load the current language Docker image are displayed.

Specifying --app goapp explicitly puts the function in the application goapp.

Specifying --local does the deployment to the local server but does not push the function image to a Docker registry--which would be necessary if we were deploying to a remote Fn server.

The output message Updating function gofn using image fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2... let's us know that the function is packaged in the image fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2.

Note that the containing folder name gofn was used as the name of the generated Docker container and used as the name of the function that container was bound to.

Normally you deploy an application without the --verbose option. If you rerun the command a new image and version is created and loaded.

Invoke your Deployed Function

There are two ways to call your deployed function.

Invoke with the CLI

The first is using the Fn CLI which makes invoking your function relatively easy. Type the following:

fn invoke goapp gofn

which results in:

{"message":"Hello World"}

When you invoked "goapp gofn" the fn server looked up the "goapp" application and then looked for the Docker container image bound to the "gofn" function and executed the code. Fn invoke invokes your function directly and independently of any associated triggers. You can always invoke a function even without it having any triggers bound to it.

You can also pass data to the invoke command. Note that you set the content type for the data passed. For example:

echo -n '{"name":"Bob"}' | fn invoke goapp gofn --content-type application/json

{"message":"Hello Bob"}

The JSON data was parsed and since name was set to "Bob", that value is passed in the output.

Understand fn deploy

If you have used Docker before the output of fn --verbose deploy should look familiar--it looks like the output you see when running docker build with a Dockerfile. Of course this is exactly what's happening! When you deploy a function like this Fn is dynamically generating a Dockerfile for your function, building a container, and then loading it for execution.

NOTE: Fn is actually using two images. The first contains the language compiler and is used to generate a binary. The second image packages only the generated binary and any necessary language runtime components. Using this strategy, the final function image size can be kept as small as possible. Smaller Docker images are naturally faster to push and pull from a repository which improves overall performance. For more details on this technique see Multi-Stage Docker Builds for Creating Tiny Go Images.

When using fn deploy --local, fn server builds and packages your function into a container image which resides on your local machine.

As Fn is built on Docker you can use the docker command to see the local container image you just generated. You may have a number of Docker images so use the following command to see only those created by fndemouser:

docker images | grep fndemouser

You should see something like:

fndemouser/gofn      0.0.2               cde014cefdad        7 minutes ago       15.1MB

Explore your Application

The fn CLI provides a couple of commands to let us see what we've deployed. fn list apps returns a list of all of the defined applications.

fn list apps

Which, in our case, returns the name of the application we created when we deployed our gofn function:

NAME    ID
goapp    01D37WY2N2NG8G00GZJ0000001

The fn list functions <app-name> command lists all the functions associated with an app.

fn list functions goapp

The returns all the functions associated with the goapp.

NAME	IMAGE                    ID
gofn	fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2	 01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014

The output confirms that goapp contains a gofn function which may be invoked via the specified URL. Now that we've confirmed deployment was successful, let's call our function.

Invoke your Deployed Function

There are two ways to call your deployed function.

Invoke with the CLI

The first is using the fn CLI which makes invoking your function relatively easy. Type the following:

fn invoke goapp gofn

which results in:

{"message":"Hello World"}

When you invoked "goapp gofn" the Fn server looked up the "goapp" application and then looked for the Docker container image bound to the "gofn" function and executed the code.

You can also pass data to the run command. Note that you set the content type for the data passed. For example:

echo -n '{"name":"Bob"}' | fn invoke goapp gofn --content-type application/json

{"message":"Hello Bob"}

The JSON data was parsed and since name was set to "Bob", that value is passed in the output.

Getting a Function's Invoke Endpoint

In addition to using the Fn invoke command, we can call a function by using a URL. To do this, we must get the function's invoke endpoint. Use the command fn inspect function <appname> <function-name>. To list the gofn function's invoke endpoint we can type:

fn inspect function goapp gofn

{
	"annotations": {
		"fnproject.io/fn/invokeEndpoint": "http://localhost:8080/invoke/01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014"
	},
	"app_id": "01DJZQWHVWNG8G00GZJ0000013",
	"created_at": "2019-08-23T17:21:03.111Z",
	"id": "01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014",
	"idle_timeout": 30,
	"image": "fndemouser/gofn:0.0.2",
	"memory": 128,
	"name": "gofn",
	"timeout": 30,
	"updated_at": "2019-08-23T17:21:03.111Z"
}

The output confirms that the gofn function's invoke endpoint is: http://localhost:8080/invoke/01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014. We can use this URL to call the function.

Invoke with Curl

Once we have the invoke endpoint, the second method for invoking our function can be used, HTTP. The Fn server exposes our deployed function at http://localhost:8080/invoke/01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014.

Use curl to invoke the function:

curl -X "POST" -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8080/invoke/01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014

The result is once again the same.

{"message":"Hello World"}

We can again pass JSON data to our function get the value of name passed to the function back.

curl -X "POST" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name":"Bob"}' http://localhost:8080/invoke/01DJZQXW47NG8G00GZJ0000014

The result is once again the same.

{"message":"Hello Bob"}

Wrap Up

Congratulations! In this tutorial you've accomplished a lot. You've created your first function, deployed it to your local Fn server and invoked it over HTTP.

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README.md

README.md

Introduction to Fn with Go

Before you Begin

Your First Function

Create your Function

Review your Function File

Understanding func.yaml

Other Function Files

Deploy Your First Function

Check your Context

Create an App

Deploy your Function to your App

Invoke your Deployed Function

Invoke with the CLI

Understand fn deploy

Explore your Application

Invoke your Deployed Function

Invoke with the CLI

Getting a Function's Invoke Endpoint

Invoke with Curl

Wrap Up

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README.md

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README.md

File metadata and controls

Introduction to Fn with Go

Before you Begin

Your First Function

Create your Function

Review your Function File

Understanding func.yaml

Other Function Files

Deploy Your First Function

Check your Context

Create an App

Deploy your Function to your App

Invoke your Deployed Function

Invoke with the CLI

Understand fn deploy

Explore your Application

Invoke your Deployed Function

Invoke with the CLI

Getting a Function's Invoke Endpoint

Invoke with Curl

Wrap Up