FaunaDB is a global serverless database that gives you ubiquitous, low latency access to app data, without sacrificing data correctness. It eliminates layers of app code for manually handling data anomalies, security, and scale, creating a friendlier dev experience for you and better app experience for your users.

faunadb

An all-in-one workflow that combines global deployment, continuous integration, and automatic HTTPS.

netlify

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a powerful expansive cloud infrastructure platform for building modern web applications.

AWS provides services for data, presentation, authentication, security, video encoding, and much more. Offering over 175 fully-featured services from data centers globally, AWS powers a large percentage of the internet.

This collection is a sequel to the [Building a Serverless JAMStack Todo app with Netlify, Gatsby, GraphQL, and FaunaDB](https://egghead.io/playlists/building-a-serverless-jamstack-todo-app-with-netlify-gatsby-graphql-and-faunadb-53bb) collection. In this collection we take the TODO application we built and convert it to run using Netlify Identity, AWS Lambda (using the serverless framework) and DynamoDB. We cover

* Fauna vs DynamoDB and when to use each
* Setting up AWS accounts
* Creating DynamoDB tables and data modeling differences between Fauna and Dynamo
* Converting our Netlify Functions deployment to a Serverless Framework deployment
* Implementing Custom authorizer functions on AWS

It uses tools that remove as many of the barriers as possible. Netlify Functions grows into Serverless Framework adn AWS Lambda, Netlify Identity is kept around, and FaunaDB can grows into DynamoDB.



We're moving to DynamoDB! We compare Fauna's features, pricing, and approach to Dynamos using motivating examples to explain *why* we'd move from Fauna to Dynamo.

FaunaDB vs DynamoDB: Querying capabilities, Pricing, and more

To create a new DynamoDB table, first we have to create a new AWS account

Creating an AWS account

We

* create a DynamoDB table
* talk about primary keys, partition keys, and sort keys
* insert an item with a pk, sk and some JSON data
* take a look at the dynamo representation of that data, including type information
* then delete the item

Creating a DynamoDB table, creating, and deleting items using the AWS console

We talk about The differences between a FaunaDB data model and a DynamoDB data model. We go on to explore single table design patterns, keys, access patterns and time to live attributes in Dynamo. We also touch on the adjacency list pattern.

Modeling data in DynamoDB using a Single Table Design (compared to FaunaDB)

We use the node.js DynamoDB document client from the aws-sdk package, along with the uuid package, to insert, update, and query items in DynamoDB. We also cover related topics like reserved words in queries and how to get around that, KeyConditionExpressions like begins_with, and other extras on the way.

node

Inserting, Updating, and Querying items using the DynamoDB node.js documentclient

We take a set of DynamoDB queries that insert, update, and query for TODOs and replace the entire backend of our GraphQL API which is currently using FaunaDB. We cover DynamoDB operation ReturnValues for put, update, and query operations, implementing transformer functions to coordinate the stored representation in DynamoDB with your business objects, and then we get into Netlify. Netlify's environment variables don't allow us to use AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID as an environment variable name. Once we fix that, we set up a pull request on GitHub, which results in a Deploy Preview that includes our new GraphQL function deployment!

apollo

Replacing FaunaDB with DynamoDB as the Backend of a GraphQL API with Zero Client Changes

We compare Netlify Functions with AWS Lambda and talk about why we'd move from one to the other. Netlify Functions is a high level DX on top of AWS Lambda, so we'll have to find a new DX as well.

Netlify Functions vs AWS Lambda

The Serverless Framework is an open source npm package that makes it easier to deploy functions to various platforms like AWS Lambda. It is not the same thing as "serverless", which is the concept while "Serverless Framework" is an npm package and a hosted product.

WTF is Serverless Framework? Is it the same as serverless? (no, it's not)

We set up a Serverless Framework account on their website, then go in write our first serverless.yml file, set up CI/CD, cover iamRoles, http events, cors, stages, and finally where to get the URL for your deployed endpoint.

Getting Started with Serverless Framework CI/CD and writing your first serverless.yml

We have a GraphQL service deployed but the service was moved from Netlify Functions to AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda doesn't do the same magic that Netlify Identity+Functions did for us, so we have to explore the GoTrue API, figure out which endpoints to hit, write an AWS custom authorizer, and make sure the authorizer will run before our lambda function.

Converting a Serverless App to run on AWS Lambda and DynamoDB with Serverless Framework

Chris Biscardi

Course Content