Serverless setup

In this section of the chapter, we will set up a serverless development environment using the Amazon Serverless Application Model command-line interface. We will use this command-line interface to initialize an API application, which will also generate some sample code for us. We will then deploy this application to the cloud, again using the command-line interface.

AWS Lambda architecture

Before we go ahead and build a Lambda function, let's explore the pieces of the AWS architecture that we will use in order to respond to a web request. These elements are shown in the following diagram:

Figure 15.1: AWS Lambda architectural components

Here, we start with a client request, on the far left-hand side of the diagram. This request takes the form of an HTTP request for a GET call on the /users API endpoint. The first architectural element that will respond to this request is Amazon API Gateway. Amazon API Gateway is an AWS service that is used...