Building Serverless Web Applications

Key Features

• Get an in-depth understanding of the serverless model
• Build a complete serverless web application end to end
• Learn how to use the Serverless Framework to improve your productivity

Book Description

This book will equip you with the knowledge needed to build your own serverless apps by showing you how to set up different services while making your application scalable, highly available, and efficient.

We begin by giving you an idea of what it means to go serverless, exploring the pros and cons of the serverless model and its use cases. Next, you will be introduced to the AWS services that will be used throughout the book, how to estimate costs, and how to set up and use the Serverless Framework.

From here, you will start to build an entire serverless project of an online store, beginning with a React SPA frontend hosted on AWS followed by a serverless backend with API Gateway and Lambda functions. You will also learn to access data from a SimpleDB database, secure the application with authentication and authorization, and implement serverless notifications for browsers using AWS IoT. This book will describe how to monitor the performance, efficiency, and errors of your apps and conclude by teaching you how to test and deploy your applications.

What you will learn

• Get a grasp of the pros and cons of going serverless and its use cases
• Discover how you can use the building blocks of AWS to your advantage
• Set up the environment and create a basic app with the Serverless Framework
• Host static files on S3 and CloudFront with HTTPS support
• Build a sample application with a frontend using React as an SPA
• Develop the Node.js backend to handle requests and connect to a SimpleDB database
• Secure your applications with authentication and authorization
• Implement the publish-subscribe pattern to handle notifications in a serverless application
• Create tests, define the workflow for deployment, and monitor your app

About the Author

Diego Zanon is a full-stack developer for both JavaScript and .NET applications. He is passionate about understanding and trying new technologies and frameworks, especially those designed to solve scalability problems. In his free time, he likes to blog and contribute to GitHub and Stack Overflow.

Diego is a computer engineer and has worked on a wide range of projects, from industrial systems to e-commerce websites, for customers around the world, including the USA, Brazil, Netherlands, and Germany.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Understanding the Serverless Model
Chapter 2. Getting Started with AWS
Chapter 3. Using the Serverless Framework
Chapter 4. Hosting the Website
Chapter 5. Building the Frontend
Chapter 6. Developing the Backend
Chapter 7. Managing a Serverless Database
Chapter 8. Securing the Serverless Application
Chapter 9. Handling Serverless Notifications
Chapter 10. Testing, Deploying, and Monitoring