Respond then continue working with AWS Lambda/API Gateway? - amazon-web-services

I currently have a Web hook that's calling AWS API Gateway -> AWS Lambda function proxy. I'd like to make the web hook more responsive and return an early reply while continuing processing in the Lambda.
I went ahead and did this early reply from the Lambda (Node v6.10) but it didn't appear to have improved responsiveness. Is API Gateway somehow waiting for the Lambda to finish executing despite having the response from the callback already?
The other idea is to post an SNS notification from Lambda and have a second Lambda listen and continue processing but would rather avoid that complication if there's a simpler way.

API Gateway currently only supports synchronous invocation (aka InvocationType: RequestResponse) of Lambda functions, so yes, it is waiting for the full response from the Lambda.
To support your use case, you could use SNS or an another intermediary AWS service like Kinesis, SQS, etc. But you could also do it with Lambda alone. Have the first Lambda function trigger a second Lambda function asynchronously with InvocationType: 'Event', this will achieve the effect you desire.
See this post for more details: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31745774/5705481

Related

How to trigger EventBridge with an HTTP request?

How do I create a rule that captures an HTTP GET that has some data and schedules the running of a lambda function at a specific time? I can write the lambda function but I am having trouble with creating an API endpoint to which I can send a "fetch" GET request. I tried creating an HTTP API in the API Gateway service. It returns this output:
{
"message": "Forbidden"
}
I am not much familiar with AWS. Please help me with creating a simple endpoint in AWS to which my app can send a GET request with some data, which will trigger an EventBridge rule to schedule the running of a lambda function at a specific time.
You don't need an API Gateway or a separate Lambda function.
To schedule the running of a specific Lambda function you can call the EventBridge put rule API.
You can find examples of the EventBridge user guide.

How to call an API Gateway API once a week

I have a REST API built using API Gateway with a couple of methods. I need to run a POST request on a method /generate-stats once a week. I currently call this method through the AWS console by pasting a request body into the "Test" feature that exists in API Gateway under the Method Execution flowchart.
How would I go about automating this call? Would a lambda that runs once a week be the simplest solution? Ideally I can store the response or trigger an alarm if the request fails.
If you want to automate a request to happen once a week you would want to look at using Amazon EventBridge.
The service itself supports either being triggered by an event (such as a new PutObject into S3 or an instance being launched) or can run based on a schedule. You would want to use the latter to set a cron expression for running this.
The next part of the rule is the target which in this case are a couple of approaches.
API Gateway requests are a supported target from within the event. If the supported functionality with EventBridge is suitable for you then you will be able to perform the request directly without any additional services.
If additional functionality is required you would need to create a Lambda function that could perform the request to API Gateway. This Lambda would then be the trigger for the event leading to the same functionality being performed.
You can build a Lambda function that can use code to perform a POST request. Then you can use scheduled events to schedule when the Lambda function will be invoked. Using a CRON expression, you can schedule your Lambda to fire once a week. For details, see:
Schedule AWS Lambda Functions Using CloudWatch Events

Can I call AWS Lambda directly without Gateway API?

I am developing a simple Lambda function on AWS to get and put data into Dynamo DB. I wanted to call this function from the Windows Client desktop application. My question is, do I really need AWS Gateway API here or can I call the lambda function directly using AWS SDK?
You can use invoke() to directly execute an AWS Lambda function from an AWS SDK. You can also pass it a payload, which will be accessible within the function.
Here is a syntax example in Python:
response = client.invoke(
ClientContext='MyApp',
FunctionName='MyFunction',
InvocationType='Event',
LogType='Tail',
Payload='fileb://file-path/input.json',
Qualifier='1',
)
You need API Gateway if you want to create REST APIs that mobile and web applications can use to call publicly available AWS services (through code running in AWS Lambda).
You can synchronous invoke your Lambda functions. This can be accomplished through a variety of options, including using the CLI or any of the supported SDKs. Note the invocation-type should be RequestResponse aws blog
bash command using aws cli
aws lambda invoke —function-name MyLambdaFunction —invocation-type RequestResponse —payload “JSON string here”
sdk python call. configuration
invoke_resp = LAMBDA_CLIENT.invoke(
FunctionName='function_name',
InvocationType='RequestResponse',
Payload='payload')
If you want to invoke the lambda asynchronous Invocation-type flag should be Event
aws lambda invoke —function-name MyLambdaFunction —invocation-type Event —payload “JSON string here”
I don't have much information from your use case. I have to assume something here.
You don't need to wait for the response back from Lambda
So you can use async call through SNS or SQS and then put your Lambda subscribed for either SNS or SQS. You can research more to choose between SNS and SQS, depends on your use case
If you need to wait for the response back from Lambda
If you want to share the Lambda's feature outside your organization, you can use API Gateway to do so, it means you still keep Lambda inside but expose an API through API Gateway to outside for usage.
If you don't want to share the Lambda's feature outside, like previous answers, you can use invoke command/sdk to achieve the result.
If I have more information from your use case, maybe the answer can be more accurate.

AWS API Gateway default response and Trigger AWS Lambda

I have been experimenting with AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda to try out a serverless architecture. Have been going through blogs and AWS documentation. Have tried out sample GET/POST. But, I have the following requirement w.r.t tracking user events from my custom application
Events are posted from my application to API end point
I wanted the API to respond back with a custom response (Say {'fine'})
(acknowledging that the request has been received)
After the response is sent, hand over the event payload to a AWS Lambda function
As per the documentation, I understand,
a) I can post events to API end point
b) On GET/POST trigger an AWS Lambda Function
- Respond back from AWS Lambda function to API request
I wanted to change the above and modify it to
a) Post events to API end point
a.0) Respond back acknowledging that request is received [Say {'fine'} ]
b) Trigger AWS Lambda function to process the event payload
Please share across suggestions on how to achieve the same.
Another asynchronous model many customers have used:
Set up an API configured to send requests to Amazon Kinesis. This API could acknowledge the request.
Set up AWS Lambda to consume your Kinesis stream.
This setup has some advantages for high workload APIs as fetches from the Kinesis stream can be batched and don't require a 1-to-1 scaling of both your API Gateway limits and Lambda limits.
Update
To answer your questions about scalability:
Kinesis
Kinesis scales by adding what it calls "shards" to the stream. Each shard handles a portion of your traffic, based on a partition key. Each shard scales up to 1000 rps or 1MBps (see limits). Even with the lower default 25 shards, this would support up to 25,000 rps or 25MBps with an evenly distributed partition key.
API Gateway
API Gateway has a default account level limit of 500 rps, but this can easily be extended by requesting a limit increase. We have customers in production that are using the service at limits above your current suggested scale.
If you want a fast response from the API and not have to wait for the processing of data, you could:
post an event to an API Gateway endpoint
trigger an AWS Lambda Function A
call asynchronously a Lambda Function B using the AWS SDK in the Lambda Function A
Call context.succeed() or context.done() or the callback function in the Lambda Function A so it respond back to API Gateway
the Lambda Function B can process the data while API Gateway already received a response
You should first run some tests to see what type of real world response times you are getting from having your lambda function complete all the logic. If the times are above what you feel are acceptable for your use case, here is another asynchronous solution utilizing an SNS Topic to trigger a secondary Lambda function.
Client Request to API Gateway -> Calls Lambda function A
Lambda A verifies payload and then publishes to SNS Topic X
Lambda A returns {fine} success message -> API Gateway -> client
SNS Topic X triggers Lambda function B
Lambda function B implements given logic

Handing back a response to API Gateway from Lambda

I'm using API Gateway-to-Lambda for a few micro-services but in at least one case the service will take 20-30 seconds to complete so in cases like this I'd like to pass back an immediate response to the client, something like:
status: 200
message: {
progressId: 1234
}
and then allow the Lambda Function to continue on (and periodically updating the "processId" somewhere that is accessible to a client. The problem is that if you call context.succeed(), context.fail(), or context.done() that apparently stops the lambda function from further execution and yet it's the only way I know to flush the stdout buffer back to the API Gateway.
This has led me to a second approach which I haven't yet try to tackle (and for simplicity sake would love to avoid) which involves API Gateway calling a "Responder" Lambda function that then asynchronously fires off the Microservice and then immediately responds to the API Gateway.
I've tried to illustrate these two options in sketch format below. I'd love to hear how anyone's been able to solve this problem.
Currently API Gateway requires that the AWS Lambda integration is synchronous. If you desire asynchronous invocation of your Lambda function, you have 2 options:
Invoking the Lambda asynchrously, either with an AWS integration calling InvokeAsync on Lambda, or using an intermediate service such as SNS or Kinesis to trigger the Lambda function.
You're #2 diagram, using a synchronous Lambda invoke to initiate the asynchronous invoke.
As of Apr/2016 is it is possible to create async Lambda execution through API Gateway by using AWS Service Proxy. See http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/integrating-api-with-aws-services-lambda.html
You can send the X-Amz-Invocation-Type header, it supports async calls through the Event value
You can optionally request asynchronous execution by specifying Event as the InvocationType
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/API_Invoke.html#API_Invoke_RequestSyntax
Also, if you can't send it via your micro-service, you can configure this header to be passed by default through the Method Execution -> Integration Request -> HTTP Headers in your API Gateway Resource
This worked for me on a micro-service -> API Gateway -> Lambda scenario, like the mentioned on the question.