Fun With Serverless JS

Fun With Serverless JS Lorna Mitchell, IBM

The Serverless Revolution @lornajane The big secret is: there ARE servers!

What is Serverless? Backend functions, deployed to the cloud, scaling on demand. Pay as you go. @lornajane

The Serverless Revolution FaaS: Functions as a Service Developer focus: • the outputs • the inputs • the logic in between Charges are usually per GBsec @lornajane

When To Go Serverless • For occasional server needs (contact form on static site) • For very variable traffic levels (millions of browsers requesting update) • To provide extra compute resource without extending existing platform (classic example: PDF generation) @lornajane

Serverless Platforms • Amazon Lambda • IBM Cloud Functions (aka OpenWhisk) • Twilio Functions • Azure Functions • Google Cloud Functions • Iron Functions • …. and more. Every day there are more. @lornajane

Getting Started @lornajane

Amazon Lambda • Install awscli command line tool (there is also a web interface) • Set up permissions via IAM and then use aws configure to get that set up • Write some code, then zip it (e.g. index.js -> hello.zip) @lornajane

Amazon Lambda Create your lambda function by supplying the zip file and some options: aws lambda create-function \ —function-name hello1 \ —runtime nodejs6.10 \ —role “arn:aws:iam::283476131276:role/service-role/Alexa” —description “A demo first Lambda function” \ —handler index.handler \ —zip-file fileb://hello.zip @lornajane

Amazon Lambda (if you want to edit your code and redeploy it) aws lambda update-function-code \ —function-name hello1 \ —zip-file fileb://hello.zip Run your lambda function: aws lambda invoke —function-name hello1 output.txt @lornajane

Hello World Lambda exports.handler = function(event, context) { context.succeed(“Hello, World!”); }; @lornajane

Hello World OpenWhisk exports.main = function(args) { return({“message”: “Hello, World!”}); }; @lornajane

IBM Cloud Functions Get the wsk CLI tool or the bx tool with wsk plugin, then log in Zip and deploy/update your code like this: zip hello.zip index.js wsk action update —kind nodejs:6 demo/hello1 hello.zip demo is the package name @lornajane

Bluemix OpenWhisk Run your action from the CLI: wsk action invoke —blocking demo/hello1 Enable web access and web request your action: wsk action update demo/hello1 —web true curl https://openwhisk.ng.bluemix.net/api/v1/web/ \ Lorna.Mitchell_Working/demo/hello1.json @lornajane

Serverless + HTTP @lornajane FaaS + HTTP = Microservices!

The Fun Part @lornajane

Alexa: Amazon Echo You speak, the device sends the sound to the cloud and speaks back the response @lornajane

Invoking Alexa @lornajane

Invoking Alexa @lornajane

Invoking Alexa @lornajane

Invoking Alexa @lornajane

Example: Project Codename Existing npm library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/project-name-generator Skill code on GitHub: https://github.com/lornajane/alexa-project-codename “Alexa, ask Project Codename for a new project name” @lornajane

Project Codename: Code function main(args) { var generate = require(‘project-name-generator’); var random = generate().spaced; var response = { “version”: “1.0”, “response” :{ “shouldEndSession”: true, “outputSpeech”: { “type”: “PlainText”, “text”: “project codename. ” + random } } } return(response); } exports.main = main; @lornajane

Project Codename: Run wsk action invoke —blocking alexa/project-codename … random 2-word responses appear. @lornajane

Redis Integration As an example, storing the new project codename in Redis: if(args.redisURL) { bluebird.promisifyAll(redis.RedisClient.prototype); var client = redis.createClient(args.redisURL); return client.setAsync([“codenames”, random]) .then(function (result) { return response; }); } else { return response; } @lornajane

Serverless In The Real World Beyond the trivial example, many things are possible: • connect to a datastore • make an API call • trigger other actions • … your imagination is the limit @lornajane

The Serverless Revolution @lornajane

Resources • Project codename skill: https://github.com/lornajane/alexa-project-codename • Serverless framework: https://github.com/serverless/serverless • IBM Cloud Functions: https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/openwhisk • My blog: https://lornajane.net @lornajane