Serverless Single Page Apps Fast, Scalable, and Available

207 Pages·2016·10.99 MB·English

by  Ben Rady

Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Early Praise for Serverless Single Page Apps
The software industry is the ultimate meritocracy—millions of developers individ-
ually deciding which technologies and trends lead to better, more testable code;
simpler solutions; more reliable outcomes; and less burdensome maintenance.
Ben is one of the visionaries who has looked forward, seen the future in the form
of serverless designs, and then come back to teach the rest of us how to build the
next generation of applications. Like having a software coach by your side, his
book makes serverless design patterns easy to understand and leads you naturally
into following best practices for deploying and testing.
➤ Tim Wagner
@timallenwagner
Serverless Single Page Apps is a comprehensive, approachable guide for developers
of all backgrounds. Whether or not you use AWS, you will find the lessons on ev-
erything from security and identity to data access indispensable.
➤ Will Gaul
Ben walks through just the right mix of JavaScript to build client-side logic,
Cognito for authentication and authorization, and Lambda for more sensitive
features that can’t be trusted to browsers. JavaScript developers will find new
ways to do typically server-side functions and will finish the book with a working
serverless app that costs next to nothing to run.
➤ Ryan Scott Brown
Author at serverlesscode.com and Serverless Framework contributor
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Your dream app will no longer be on the application server, inside of a big com-
puter stored in your company’s closet. It is on the cloud—secure, and managed
by a fleet of services with excellent uptime. Let this book start your new develop-
ment journey.
➤ Daniel Hinojosa
Author of Testing in Scala
This book is a great introduction to the bleeding-edge concept of building a
serverless web application. It will take you from having zero knowledge to deploying
serverless applications.
➤ Jake McCrary
Lead software developer, Outpace Systems
I read a lot of technical books. This one is the best I’ve read this year, and one of
the best of all time. Ben Rady has an authorial voice that is both relaxed and as-
suring. I never get the sense that he’s bragging about his knowledge or needlessly
padding his material. He switches fluently between “here’s what we’re doing” and
“here’s why we’re doing it” without relying too heavily on one approach over the
other. His opinions and his technical choices are well founded and sound. Read
this book.
➤ David Rupp
RuppWorks LLC
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Serverless Single Page Apps
Fast, Scalable, and Available
Ben Rady
The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Raleigh, North Carolina
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products
are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and The Pragmatic
Programmers, LLC was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in
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Every precaution was taken in the preparation of this book. However, the publisher assumes
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information (including program listings) contained herein.
Our Pragmatic books, screencasts, and audio books can help you and your team create
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The team that produced this book includes:
Jacquelyn Carter (editor)
Potomac Indexing, LLC (index)
Nicole Abramowitz, Liz Welch (copyedit)
Gilson Graphics (layout)
Janet Furlow (producer)
For sales, volume licensing, and support, please contact [email protected].
For international rights, please contact [email protected].
Copyright © 2016 The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior consent of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN-13: 978-1-68050-149-0
Encoded using the finest acid-free high-entropy binary digits.
Book version: P1.0—June 2016
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
To my wife Jenny, who gives me strength;
My daughter Katherine, for her kindness;
And my son Will, who’ll save the world
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
1. Starting Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Serverless Web Applications 2
Using Your Workspace 8
Deploying to Amazon S3 14
First Deployment 20
2. Routing Views with Hash Events . . . . . . . . 21
Designing a Testable Router 22
The Router Function 27
Adding Routes 31
Adding View Parameters 33
Loading the Application 37
Deploy Again 42
3. Essentials of Single Page Apps . . . . . . . . 45
Creating a View 45
Defining the Data Model 49
Handling User Input 55
Creating an Application Shell 62
Using Custom Events 66
Deploy Again 69
4. Identity as a Service with Amazon Cognito . . . . . 71
Connecting to External Identity Providers 72
Creating an Identity Pool 76
Fetching a Google Identity 80
Requesting AWS Credentials 82
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank
Contents • viii
Creating a Profile View 88
Deploy Again 90
5. Storing Data in DynamoDB . . . . . . . . . 93
Working with DynamoDB 93
Creating a Table 98
Authorizing DynamoDB Access 103
Saving Documents 104
Fetching Documents 108
Data Access and Validation 109
Deploy Again 112
6. Building (Micro)Services with Lambda . . . . . . 113
Understanding Amazon Lambda 114
Deploy First 118
Writing Lambda Functions 125
Invoking Lambda Functions 131
Using the Amazon API Gateway 132
Deploy Again 134
7. Serverless Security . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Securing Your AWS Account 137
Query Injection Attacks 140
Cross-Site Scripting Attacks 141
Cross-Site Request Forgery 144
Wire Attacks and Transport Layer Security 146
Denial-of-Service Attacks 149
Deploy Again 151
8. Scaling Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Monitor Web Services 153
Analyze S3 Web Traffic 157
Optimize for Growth 165
Costs of the Cloud 169
Deploy Again (and Again, and Again...) 174
A1. Installing Node.js . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A2. Assigning a Domain Name . . . . . . . . . 179
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Prepared exclusively for Sandi Frank