Lambda processing same SNS event multiple times? - amazon-web-services

I have an AWS Lambda function configured to process SNS events from a single topic. When the function runs it will potentially send out some other notifications and call context.succeed, or context.fail if some error occurs.
The problem is the same SNS event seems to be invoking the Lambda multiple times. Looking at the CloudWatch logs I see
START RequestId: cd7afdf8-2816-11e6-bca2-6f2e3027c5e1 Version: $LATEST
Which eventually ends
END RequestId: cd7afdf8-2816-11e6-bca2-6f2e3027c5e1
REPORT RequestId: cd7afdf8-2816-11e6-bca2-6f2e3027c5e1 ...
Immediately followed in the same log by a start for the exact same RequestID
START RequestId: cd7afdf8-2816-11e6-bca2-6f2e3027c5e1 Version: $LATEST
Looking into CloudWatch at the topic sending this SNS Event it seems to only be Publishing and Delivering only one even as I had expected, so it seems to be a Lambda-side problem. Does anyone know of any reason an event might be triggering my lambda multiple times like this?
Edit: I've noticed that this seems to be happening when the lambda receives a failure. I don't see any sort of retry configuration on the lambda and wouldn't expect it to be behaving this way by default.

From Amazon lambda FAQs page
https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/faqs/
Q: What happens if my Lambda function fails during processing an event?
On failure, Lambda functions being invoked synchronously will respond with an exception. Lambda functions being invoked asynchronously are retried at least 3 times, after which the event may be rejected. Events from Amazon Kinesis streams and Amazon DynamoDB streams are retried until the Lambda function succeeds or the data expires. Kinesis and DynamoDB Streams retain data for 24 hours.

I had a similar issue with a lambda cron job function. I needed to send a request to a service/api that runs for a couple of seconds before it can return the first byte/response (no response processing needed), so my fix was like the following:
exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
// TODO implement
var https = require("https");
token = "xxxxxxxx";
var options = {
host: "api.xxxxx.com",
path: "/manage/cronjob/video",
method: "GET",
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
"Authorization": "Bearer "+token
}
};
var req = https.request(options);
req.write("");
req.end();
//add timeout for context.done()
setTimeout(function(){
context.done();
callback(null, 'Hello from Lambda');
},1000); //This timeout should be lower than the lambda's timeout };
In this is example, we have an explicit callback to force the lambda exit, before the function gets a timeout error & triggers a retry for another 2 times
Hope it helps

Related

Idempotent AWS lambda does not execute code on cold start

Problem
When I add the Idempotency configuration of aws-lambda-powertools my function code is not executed propertly.
The AWS lambda serves as message handler for a MS Teams chatbot when the function performs a cold start the async code within the handler is not executed and no message is returned to the user. I also don't see any logs so it seems that the code in the async handler is not executed at all.
Could this be due to the way I handle my async handler?
Code
#idempotent(persistence_store=persistence_layer, config=cfg)
def lambda_handler(event:dict, context: dict):
asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(lambda_messages(event))
payload = json.loads(event["body"])
return {"status": 400, "payload": payload}
The issue was due to the timeout of my aws sam function not being configured properly. Because of aws-labmda-powertools it was hard to debug as the error was not easily vissible.

AWS Lambda Function invoked by SQS trigger is not respecting the visibility timeout I'm manually setting within the function

I'm implementing my own webhooks service which will send out events to subscribed webhooks.
Overview of architecture:
events are pushed onto an SQS queue
a lambda function is triggered by SQS messages (event source mapping)
for each event, I make outgoing http requests to subscribed webhooks
non-2xx responses must be retried with exponential backoff (in such event, I change the message visibility on the received message)
since lambdas that are invoked by SQS will automatically delete the message upon completion I throw an error at the end of the function to prevent the automatic delete
As far as I can tell, the call to change the message visibility is succeeding. I'm wondering if there's something else baked into lambdas that are invoked by SQS. Upon failure from the lambda, is it internally changing the message visibility again? Or do lambdas that are invoked by SQS not respect message visibility changes (this really doesn't make any sense to me). Curious if anyone has any insight into this problem. I was quite surprised to find out that lambda automatically deletes messages upon success since it makes my particular use-case a little clunky feeling - throwing an error to fail the lambda function to prevent the message from being deleted.
Thanks in advance!
The nature of the SQS integration with Lambda is that the integration controls the polling of the messages. The mechanism used to determine if the message should be deleted is that the response from the lambda is not an error. It's not clearly stated in the documentation, but I believe when an error occurs the integration is going to set the visibility timeout to zero in order to make it immediately available for another process to pick it up. So in your example you are setting it to some number that allows you to retry, but when you return an error the integration is setting the timeout back to zero. If you need to have more control over that process you probably should not use the integration.
Update: This is actually not the case. I was failing to properly wait for the call to adjust the timeout to finish. As such the lambda was closing before that request was completing. The timeout I'm setting on the message within the lambda is being respected. I'm then throwing an error to prevent the message from being deleted.
Since SQS triggers for lambdas process messages in batches, using await in a standard forEach doesn't work (forEach does not await the callbacks if they are async). To bypass that, you can create your own version of an async forEach:
var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
exports.handler = async function(event, context) {
var sqs = new AWS.SQS({apiVersion: '2012-11-05'});
await asyncForEach(event.Records, async record => {
const { receiptHandle } = record;
const sqsParams = {
QueueUrl: '<YOUR_QUEUE_URL>', /* required */
ReceiptHandle: receiptHandle, /* required */
VisibilityTimeout: '<in seconds>' /* required */
};
try {
let res = await sqs.changeMessageVisibility(sqsParams).promise();
console.log(res);
} catch (err) {
console.log(err, err.stack);
throw new Error('Fail.');
}
}
});
return {};
};
async function asyncForEach(array, callback) {
for (let index = 0; index < array.length; index++) {
await callback(array[index], index, array);
}
}

AWS Lambda Task timed out

I have create a one function and sent mail to users but it time out
05:48:54
END RequestId: 3508fc6c-29cb-442b-95dd-c963018ca5f3
05:48:54
REPORT RequestId: 3508fc6c-29cb-442b-95dd-c963018ca5f3 Duration: 900083.68 ms Billed Duration: 900000 ms Memory Size: 256 MB Max Memory Used: 43 MB
05:48:54
2019-06-25T05:48:54.532Z 3508fc6c-29cb-442b-95dd-c963018ca5f3 Task timed out after 900.08 seconds
I have set TimeoutInfo 15 min.
Another potential issue might be that you have an active connection, so the aws lambda is not responding until the connection terminates.
callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop – Set to false to send the response
right away when the callback executes, instead of waiting for the
Node.js event loop to be empty. If this is false, any outstanding
events continue to run during the next invocation.
If this is the case, you can set callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop = false to make callback response immediately by
context.callbackWaitsForEmptyEventLoop = false;
Official doc
Check what is the timeout set in configuration file
Also check for VPC!
"Error handling for a given event source depends on how Lambda is invoked. Amazon CloudWatch Events is configured to invoke a Lambda function asynchronously."
"Asynchronous invocation – Asynchronous events are queued before being used to invoke the Lambda function. If AWS Lambda is unable to fully process the event, it will automatically retry the invocation twice, with delays between retries."
So the retry should happen in this case. Not sure what was wrong with your lambda function , just delete and created again and may works!

Asynchronous HTTP request in AWS Lambda

I am wanting to execute a http request inside of a lambda function, invoked by API Gateway. The problem is, the request takes a bit of time to complete (<20 seconds) and don't want the client waiting for a response. In my research on asynchronous requests, I learned that I can pass the X-Amz-Invocation-Type:Event header to make the request execute asynchronously, however this isn't working and the code still "waits" for the http request to complete.
Below is my lambda code:
'use strict';
const https = require('https');
exports.handler = function (event, context, callback) {
let requestUrl;
requestUrl = event.queryStringParameters.url;
https.get(requestUrl, (res) => {
console.log('statusCode:', res.statusCode);
console.log('headers:', res.headers);
res.on('data', (d) => {
process.stdout.write(d);
});
}).on('error', (e) => {
console.error(e);
});
let response = {
"statusCode": 200,
"body": JSON.stringify(event.queryStringParameters)
};
callback(null, response);
};
Any help would be appreciated.
You can use two Lambda functions.
Lambda 1 is triggered by API Gateway then calls Lambda 2 asynchronously (InvocationType = Event) then returns a response to the user.
Lambda 2, once invoked, will trigger the HTTP request.
Whatever you do, don't use two lambda functions.
You can't control how lambda is being called, async or sync. The caller of the lambda decides that. For APIGW, it has decided to call lambda sync.
The possible solutions are one of:
SQS
Step Functions (SF)
SNS
In your API, you call out to one of these services, get back a success, and then immediately return a 202 to your caller.
If you have a high volume of single or double action execution use SQS. If you have potentially long running with complex state logic use SF. If you for someone reason want to ignore my suggestions, use SNS.
Each of these can (and should) call back out to a lambda. In the case that you need to run more than 15 minutes, they can call back out to CodeBuild. Ignore the name of the service, it's just a lambda that supports up to 8 hour runs.
Now, why not use two lambdas (L1, L2)? The answer is simple. Once you respond that your async call was queued (SQS, SF, SNS), to your users (202). They'll expect that it works 100%. But what happens if that L2 lambda fails. It won't retry, it won't continue, and you may never know about it.
That L2 lambda's handler no longer exist, so you don't know the state any more. Further, you could try to add logging to L2 with wrapper try/catch but so many other types of failures could happen. Even if you have that, is CloudWatch down, will you get the log? Possible not, it just isn't a reliable strategy. Sure if you are doing something you don't care about, you can build this arch, but this isn't how real production solutions are built. You want a reliable process. You want to trust that the baton was successfully passed to another service which take care of completing the user's transaction. This is why you want to use one of the three services: SQS, SF, SNS.

Invoke AWS Lambda and return response to API Gateway asyncronously

My use case is such that I'll have an AWS Lambda front ended with API Gateway.
My requirement is that once the Lambda is invoked it should return a 200 OK response back to API Gateway which get forwards this to the caller.
And then the Lambda should start its actual processing of the payload.
The reason for this is that the API Gateway caller service expects a response within 10 seconds else it times out. So I want to give the response before I start with the processing.
Is this possible?
With API Gateway's "Lambda Function" integration type, you can't do this with a single Lambda function -- that interface is specifically designed to be synchronous. The workaround, if you want to use the Lambda Function integration type is for the synchronous Lambda function, invoked by the gateway, to invoke a second, asynchronous, Lambda function through the Lambda API.
However, asynchronous invocations are possible without the workaround, using an AWS Service Proxy integration instead of a Lambda Function integration.
If your API makes only synchronous calls to Lambda functions in the back end, you should use the Lambda Function integration type. [...]
If your API makes asynchronous calls to Lambda functions, you must use the AWS Service Proxy integration type described in this section. The instructions apply to requests for synchronous Lambda function invocations as well. For the asynchronous invocation, you must explicitly add the X-Amz-Invocation-Type:Event header to the integration request.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/integrating-api-with-aws-services-lambda.html
Yes, simply create two Lambda functions. The first Lambda function will be called by the API Gateway and will simply invoke the second Lambda function and then immediately return successfully so that the API Gateway can respond with an HTTP 200 to the client. The second Lambda function will then take as long as long as it needs to complete.
If anyone is interested, here is the code you can use to do the two lambdas approach. The code below is the first lambda that you should setup which would then call the second, longer running, lambda. It takes well under a second to execute.
const Lambda = new (require('aws-sdk')).Lambda();
/**
* Note: Step Functions, which are called out in many answers online, do NOT actually work in this case. The reason
* being that if you use Sequential or even Parallel steps they both require everything to complete before a response
* is sent. That means that this one will execute quickly but Step Functions will still wait on the other one to
* complete, thus defeating the purpose.
*
* #param {Object} event The Event from Lambda
*/
exports.handler = async (event) => {
let params = {
FunctionName: "<YOUR FUNCTION NAME OR ARN>",
InvocationType: "Event", // <--- This is KEY as it tells Lambda to start execution but immediately return / not wait.
Payload: JSON.stringify( event )
};
// we have to wait for it to at least be submitted. Otherwise Lambda runs too fast and will return before
// the Lambda can be submitted to the backend queue for execution
await new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
Lambda.invoke(params, function(err, data) {
if (err) {
reject(err, err.stack);
}
else {
resolve('Lambda invoked: '+data) ;
}
});
});
// Always return 200 not matter what
return {
statusCode : 200,
body: "Event Handled"
};
};
Check the answer here on how to set up an Async Invoke to the Lambda function. This will return 200 immediately to the client, but the Lambda will process on it's own asynchronously.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/40982649/5679071