Serverless Single Page Apps: Fast, Scalable, and Available

by Ben Rady

Don't waste your time building an application server. See how to build low-cost, low-maintenance, highly available, serverless single page web applications that scale into the millions of users at the click of a button. Quickly build reliable, well-tested single page apps that stay up and running 24/7 using Amazon Web Services. Avoid messing around with middle-tier infrastructure and get right to the web app your customers want.

You don't need to manage your own servers to build powerful web applications. This book will show you how to create a single page app that runs entirely on web services, scales to millions of users, and costs less per day than a cup of coffee.

Using a web browser, a prepared workspace, and your favorite editor, you'll build a complete single page web application, step by step. Learn the fundamental technologies behind modern single page apps, and use web standards to create lean web applications that can take advantage of the newest technologies. Deploy your application quickly using Amazon S3. Use Amazon Cognito to connect with providers like Google and Facebook to manage user identities. Read and write user data directly from the browser using DynamoDB, and build your own scalable custom microservices with Amazon Lambda.

Whether you've never built a web application before or you're a seasoned web developer who's just looking for an alternative to complex server-side web frameworks, this book describes a simple approach to building serverless web applications that you can easily apply or adapt for your own projects.

What You

To follow the tutorial in this book, you'll need a computer with a web browser. You'll also need a text editor and a git client. Building this web application will require some sort of development web server. You can use your own, or you can also use the one included with the tutorial's prepared workspace. The included web server requires Ruby 2.0, although we also suggest few alternatives.

To get started quickly, you need a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. If you're new to these topics, you can get up to speed using links we'll provide in the Introduction.

Genres: Programming, Technology, Nonfiction

213 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2016

Reviews

[Mike Han · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introductory book giving you the basic architecture and knowledge required for what the buzz surrounding Serverless architecture is all about. Comes with in-depth tutorials and code samples.

[Johnny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice explanation of the term “Serveless Applications”, that aren’t serverless at all but use services like AWS Lambda to store the logic of the backend. The book has a good introduction for people new to the topic of single page applications and doesn’t use any of the big frameworks (like Angular). The explanation on how the pricing in AWS works is well written and helps to make the right design decisions. However, I missed a close of the gap between the fundamental basic parts to a real-world scenario with an established framework to build applications. It’s like here are bricks and that’s how you cut wood now you have all the parts to create your house. That may be true, but it is not enough.

[Göran Svensson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reading. The client side code could be better. Overall a good approach with TDD.

[Torben Fojuth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm an backend developer and i was looking for a book that shows me how the different services of a serverless application interact with each other. The prioority in this book lies more on building the single page app than on how to work with AWS. It's not a bad book at all but not the one i was looking for.

[Jake McCrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was one of the early technical reviewers of the book and as a result I've read multiple drafts of it with the earlier draft being significantly different than the close-to-final draft.

Luckily for me (since I read multiple versions of it) the book is very enjoyable. It shows you how to build a "serverless" JavaScript application on top of Amazon Web Service offerings (DynamoDB, Cognito, Lambda, API Gateway, S3). The writing is clear and examples are good.

It uses just plain JavaScript. It doesn't bog you down by using any frameworks or libraries with which you might not be familiar. If you walk through the book and follow along, you'll finish the book and have an application deployed to AWS and know how to start up your own serverless project.

One thing that stands out is Ben's use of test driven development for building the JavaScript code. Not everything in the book is developed test-first (though, the book says you can see the tests by looking at the code repository online) but area that is developed test-first gives the reader a nice taste of the benefits this style provides.

Overall I'd recommend this book to developers who are interested in learning what a serverless application might look like. If you follow along you'll know how to build one by the end.

[Alok · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book before it was officially completed, but it was a great practical tutorial on how to build an "all javascript" serverless app. Working through the various bugs was actually a good way to get oriented, though I think it will be even better when it is finished. Like most introductory books, this is really just a jumping off point - there is a lot more to learn in virtually every direction. However, I feel like I am sufficiently oriented now that I can figure out which direction will be most productive for my needs.

[Joe Narvaez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did anyone actually read this? He creates a bash script that abstracts away the all of the AWS APIs.... You learn to rewrite that bash script... You hardly ever interact with the CLI, which defeats the whole purpose. The cognito implementation is severely lacking. You can't style the the login button and you can only access 3 social media APIs. The jasmine testing was a total distraction. The writing is not concise.

I read the lambda documentation isn't so great.. too bad. It would've been nice to have a better guide.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely gentle introduction to AWS "serverless" computing, using simple JavaScript and AWS command line tools. Good emphasis on frequent automated deploys and testable code.

You're not going to get into API versioning and other details, but a great first hand-on guide.

[Dan Ofer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful instruction for designing Single-page web applications (frontend) that rely on a distributed microservice architecture (backend).

[William Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a resource that would fit best in the hands of an notice to intermediate developer. it goes over how to setup the proposed architecture end to end on a very granular level. if you are a seasoned engineer or architect, testing the first chapter, digesting it's diagrams then skipping ahead to the lambda section and reading from there on is advised.

being critical, it tried to do too much. where the focus could be more in depth on the architecture and introduce variants and alternatives, the author gets caught up in teaching the reader to write their own client side router.