Bookmarks (108)

Securing AWS Lambda Function URLs — Lambda Function URLs are a handy new AWS Lambda feature but there are some security implications worth keeping in mind given they can expose your functions or the layout of your infrastructure more explicitly than API Gateway might.

How Not to Test with DynamoDB — Looks at just some of the ways the author has done testing wrong in the hope that you can start out in the right direction.

Run Next.js Functions in the Background Based on Events and Schedules — A commercial ‘programmable event data platform’ (Inngest) makes the case for using their offering to simplify the automation of background tasks. It includes a reasonably generous free tier to take it for a test drive.

Three Pitfalls of AWS Step Functions and How You Can Avoid Them — Allen warns that, when working with Step Functions “if you’re not careful, you might get in over your head and find yourself struggling to do routine maintenance”. Here’s some advice on keeping your head above water.

Why Are So Few Funded Startups Using Serverless? — I’m not entirely sure of the underlying data point behind the assertion, but nonetheless this is a pretty fascinating round up of developer opinions about the utility of serverless approaches, DX, hiring, and other concerns.

APIs to Encode, Play and Analyze Video. Start a 30 Day Trial — Bitmovin provides software and APIs for companies and development teams to build products and services for every industry. Deliver content in unparalleled quality, supported by real-time analytics, on more devices and platforms than the competition.

Koyeb: A Serverless Platform That Integrates with Your GitHub Repo — Koyeb now offers a general purpose serverless platform that you can configure through a simple git push or by using Docker containers. fly.io is another player in this space I am keen on, though the servers are more explicit with them.

Self-Hosted, Open-Source Firebase Alternative — Appwrite is a secure, self-hosted solution that provides developers with a set of easy-to-use REST APIs for their core backend needs. Build fast and own your data with Appwrite. Click here to learn more.

Cloudflare's Big Week:  Announcing D1: Cloudflare's First SQL Database — D1 is Cloudflare’s first SQL database — it’s designed for Cloudflare Workers, is built on the ubiquitous and serverless SQLite, and the beta starts in just a month's time. Given this is Cloudflare's 'Platform Week', this wasn't the only news from them. They've been really busy with a slew of other announcements including:

A Cold Start Comparison of AWS Lambda and Cloudflare Workers — A comparison of AWS Lambda, CloudFront Functions and Cloudflare Workers functions around cold start times. The results surprised me a bit in that the average response time wasn’t that different. CloudFront Functions do very well, but are more limited in their capabilities by design.

Debugging AWS Step Functions Executions with a New Console Experience — Here’s a new opt-in console experience that aims to make it easier to analyze, debug, and optimize Standard Workflows. This post explains the new capabilities, looking at how to debug workflows quickly, sort and filter on state events, and view the input and output path processing for each state.

Using Next.js ISR with Serverless Cloud — Serverless Inc's cloud platform supports Next.js incremental static regeneration (ISR) rendering method (basically generating static pages at runtime rather than build time). This post walks through how to use it.

Yan Cui's Testing Strategy for Serverless Apps — It’s always good to see how the experts tackle things and here Yan shares his (opinionated, naturally) thoughts on testing serverless applications. Observability appears to be of much more importance in the serverless sphere than traditional forms of testing.

▶  Serverless for Frontend Engineers with Swizec Teller — Swizec does courses in using React alongside serverless technologies and speaks with Jeremy and Rebecca here about approaching serverless as a frontend engineer, JavaScript, and troublesome tutorials.

Orchestrating S3 Glacier Deep Archive Object Retrieval with AWS Step Functions — Storing files on S3 is one thing, but if you have rarely accessed data you want to store for the long haul, Glacier Deep Archive is one way to do that. But what about building a system to manage the retrieval of such items? AWS Step Functions can be used to organize...

elastic pypi 4.0: A Serverless Python Package Index System — I’m not deep enough into Python to know why you’d want to roll your own PyPI repository, but you can now do it serverlessly, at least.

We're All Living On It – But What Exactly is 'The Edge?' — You’ll have increasingly heard about ‘the edge’ in terms of where various platforms run their functions, but what exactly is this ‘edge’? An engineer at Netlify breaks down the idea here, but ultimately it’s about running code as close to an end user as possible.

Building a Serverless Backend for Slack on AWS Lambda — A straightforward tutorial covering building a Slack app that integrates with the Giphy API for animated GIF goodness. It has an up to date twist, too, by using Lambda’s new ‘function URL’ feature rather than going through API Gateway. The code itself is in Go, but that’s not a key part.

Make Workloads Less Work with CockroachDB — Automate scale, high availability, deployment and operations for your applications with CockroachDB — a serverless database designed to let you start fast, pay as you go, and build without worrying about your database.

A Deep Dive into Go for OpenFaaS Functions — The creator of OpenFaaS (a functions as a service layer for Kubernetes) details the new Go templates in OpenFaaS that make life a lot easier (and your apps more robust), as well as improvements that came courtesy of Go 1.18.

The Practical Guide to HDR by Bitmovin — To help demystify and highlight the essentials of HDR, Bitmovin created this practical guide to provide background knowledge around formats, conversions and playback that will empower readers to make informed decisions about their own HDR workflows.

How to Load Test Your Apps For Free by Going Serverless — Stress testing your system can in itself be stressful, but here’s a look at how serverless can quickly and easily run cost-effective load tests with minimal setup.

8 Best Practices for Optimizing Lambda Functions — And, good news, the advice isn’t just “rewrite everything in Rust!” These are good tips, though, and cover the main bases for ensuring your Lambda-hosted functions are running as well as they should whether it’s tweaking memory settings, setting good timeouts or cutting down on costs.