I am currently looking into AWS Amplify as well as I am reading Serverless Stack. My goal is to create a simple ToDo list app. Both "Getting started" / Documentations seem to have the same goal. However, AWS Amplify guide seems to be way easier from the setup.
And that's where I am confused. As far as I understand AWS Amplify also uses DynamoDB and gets data via GraphQL. But where is the difference between these two documentations?
Serverless Stack is a resource providing guidance on how to create serverless applications with AWS. It was created by a company called Anomaly Innovations.
AWS Amplify is an open source framework maintained by AWS which helps developers integrate their applications with AWS resources.
AWS Amplify is a very confusing service and consists of many components. I would categorize as follow.
AWS Amplify Console
AWS Amplify CLI
AWS SDK&Libraries to integrate to your mobile or web
AWS Appsync Transformer
AWS Amplify Console gives you the ability to easily to setup Continous Deployment for your Amplify project. Amplify Console use together with AWS Amplify CLI for you to manage different environments.
Let's say you want to start the Todo App. You start on your local using Amplify CLI and create API Gateway/Lambda/DynamoDB stacks.
Amplify CLI lets you create the whole stack easily and push it to AWS to deploy the whole stack. Then you can create a different environment based on the same stacks, let's say you want your dev environment, and QA environment and production environment.
Amplify CLI gives you all the commands necessary for you to achieve this, then if you want to auto-deploy the change to AWS when someone push the code to your Git repository, you can use the Amplify Console to set up exactly that.
Amplify Console also integrate with AWS Domain so, you can easily point your own domain to any of the environment.
On top of these, Amplify also provides, GraphQL Transformer, which you can easily define the GraphQL schema in Amplify format and it will transform and deploy to AWS Appsync. And there is a Mobile SDK which you can sync data between AppSync and you're mobile and provides some UIs as well.
We used one of our web projects and we liked it for Continues Deployment aspect of the Amplify, but we didn't like the AppSync(GraphQL) aspect of Amplify just b/c it was not easy to implement layered resolver.
Also, keep in mind that Amplify CLI/SDK/Transformer is under one project and it's still very fragile. You can take a look at the version history from https://www.npmjs.com/package/#aws-amplify/cli and you will see few version bump just in a single month. There were many obvious bugs we encounter, even on the AWS Console.
I haven't use the Serverless yet, but as long as I know, Serverless provides No1 and No2 of Amplify with greater stability.
Related
Sorry, I’m sort of a newbie when it comes to Amazon AWS Cloud so sorry if I sound naïve.
For .NET developers, I’ve used Visual Studio 2019’s AWS Lambda project to code Lambda functions and ultimately deploy it to Amazon AWS cloud
However, my concern is that there is No way to version and/or back up the Configurations for the AWS Services ( i.e., S3 bucket, Amazon SNS & SQS, etc.) that are invoked and/or trigger the various AWS Lambda Functions
The problem is that IT developers who configure said AWS Services have to use the ADFS AWS Services console website’s GUI to configure the various AWS Services, and if someone mistakenly deletes an AWS Services then they lose the configuration settings as well?
How do we go about versioning and/or backing up Configurations for the AWS Services?
There are Infrastructure as a Code frameworks like Terraform and Ansible designed to address that.
You can't really delete an AWS service.
it seems like you guys are kind of "new" to AWS so I will recommend using CloudFormation templates as Infrastructure As Code tool. All the configuration of how your AWS resources are supposed to look like can be added to the template and you deploy the template to create your AWS resources. Its AWS-Native and does not cost you anything.
On top of it, you also want to add your CloudFormation templates to version control system.
I have a simple shell script which issues several commands using awscli and displays information to the screen. It depends on having correct settings in ~/.aws/config and ~/.aws/credentials. I want to distribute it to about 10 users who have IAM accounts with limited privileges. However I don't want to use the shell - I want something cross-platform, easy to use for the users and easy for me to update. So I decided that I want to create a simple web application in JS instead, using the AWS SDK.
It seems that this use case is specifically supported by AWS, the first bullet point under "Common Use Cases" in What Is the AWS SDK for JavaScript? is "Build a custom console to AWS services in which you access and combine features across Regions and services to best meet your organizational or project needs" which exactly describes what I want to do.
The problem is that I can't find the relevant documentation on how to perform the user authentication. All the examples that I was able to find talk about some "Amazon Cognito" service and discuss much more complicated use cases, such as authenticating pools of external users through an external authentication provider and mapping them to IAM roles, which sounds too complicated for what I want to do. Is there a way to just authenticate the users that I have with their IAM user/password, and authorize them to access the AWS services based on their existing IAM permissions? Or is using Cognito, creating additional roles, etc. mandatory?
While writing this question I found out another question about AWS Amplify and now I'm even more confused. Is AWS Amplify what I would want to use?
You can write a web app using the AWS SDK for JavaScript that invokes various AWS Services. You do NOT need to use AWS Amplify to create a web app.
A Web application that uses the AWS SDK for JavaScript uses creds like any other AWS app. Here is an AWS tutorial that shows how to use the AWS SDK for JavaScript to write a basic web app that invokes the AWS SQS service. It will hopefully point you in the right direction.
Creating an example messaging application
This topic covers Prerequisites and other information, such as creating the required AWS resources, you need to know to write a web app using the AWS SDK for JavaScript.
Also - the link you referenced was the JavaScript V2 DEV Guide. Its better to use the AWS JavaScript V3 DEV Guide.
I have an AWS AppSync API (maybe like 80% done) and I'd like to create environments for staging, development, production, etc. My initial googling led me to using Amplify to create environments but I didn't see anything about making environments for existing APIs. I've been using the console to develop the API (in case this detail is important). I'm new to using AWS so I'm not really sure what to look for but my question is how do I create different environments for my existing AppSync API?
AWS Amplify and the "Applications" feature within AWS Lambda seem to have a few things in common:
Both seem to be a wrapper around several AWS resources
Both walk you through a guided setup to provision a working AWS stack
Both set up some CI/CD pipelines for you so that Git commits trigger a build and deploy
So what are the differences between these two services, and what are some scenarios where you might want to choose one over the other?
AWS Amplify is a toolchain for front-end developers to interact with AWS resources. It provides a cli program to manage resources and (JS/Android/iOS) libraries to integrate them into your front-end applications.
It doesn't 'wrap' resources, but is merely a convenience layer to manage them (it is somewhat similar to AWS SAM); Amplify generates CloudFormation templates, stores those locally, and uses aws-cli to provision them. Note that Amplify can also be used just as a front-end library to integrate resources that are already set up.
AWS Lambda Applications is an actual AWS service, or rather a feature of AWS Lambda. It groups related resources, so they can be managed and deployed as if it was a single resource.
... what are
some scenarios where you might want to choose one over the other?
Amplify is aimed at web- and mobile developers: it allows them to manage backend resources without much backend knowledge.
It is not a matter of 'using one over the other'; they can actually be used in conjunction with each other.
I'm having some confusion here and wanted to see if someone can set me straight.
I'm using Amplify for a Vue app. It calls API Gateway which calls Lambda and all of this is set up manually but I want to use the power of IaaS and do it with SAM.
Amplify CLI includes the ability to add APIs/Functions and in turn creates the CloudFormation Templates and Stack, which is nice. However this doesn't seem to create the Amplify app itself aside from creating an empty app connected to no repo and of course the CLI only stretches to so many services.
I see that it IS possible to configure an Amplify app in CloudFormation. And SAM comes with command line tools that'd be useful as well. What is the correct way to set all this up??
Can I create a SAM template for Amplify creation that works with the Stack created by Amplify to make API/Functions rather than manually building the SAM Template without auto generated assistance? Then if I add non-Amplify-supported Services later I can add them to the SAM as well.
I'm having a time trying to navigate SAM/CF/CDK/Amplify haha
I hope this helps. Lets start with your easier issues:
I'm having a time trying to navigate SAM/CF/CDK/Amplify haha
Yea.
AWS CF (Cloudformation) is aws's go at giving use a way to create(/rud) AWS resources using a templating engine. Its rather massive. And odd. Here's an example from the User Guide
Here is a JSON template to Create a simple DynamoDB table.
Here is that same template from the Designer Link next to it
Here is a pastebin version : 1QNXGTdZ
If the above brings up questions like, Why are both templates different? You are not alone. Overall, CF is massive but pretty neat as it lets you create/rud AWS resources
AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) IMO is version of CF that is a lot simpler/easier. Here you can CRUD AWS Resources and organize them in a stack.
Note: SAM uses CF under the hood.
Amplify is a framework to make working with cognito (login) , aws js sdks, and more. It can take your vue/react app and add services such as, api, authentication, and document (dynamodb). For a node app, it stores config information in a file calls "aws-exports.js". Amplify can also help you deploy and store your codebase.
If you create any resources using the amplify cli, it uses CF under the hood. I believe all the files get stored in folder named ".amplify". IMO, its not fun as its hard to manage things later on using Amplify CLI or AWS console.
Can I create a SAM template for Amplify creation that works with the Stack created by Amplify to make API/Functions rather than manually building the SAM Template without auto generated assistance?
Yes. Just keep on using that Amplify CLI. Once that stops being fun use the AWS Console.
Then if I add non-Amplify-supported Services later I can add them to the SAM as well.
Also yes. You can create a new SAM stack any time with lambda's, userpools, etc and them connect to them with your Amplify applications new found AWS SDKs.
From my limited experience:
give AWS SAM a shot. Its simple and easier to get than CF
I never use the Amplify CLI anymore. It was neat in the start, but I've outgrown it as running the commands gives me a headache in comparsion to the SAM template defintions