Lambdaless and AWS CDK

Lambdaless,
and AWS CDK
MooYeol Prescott Lee
Software Engineer @ Vingle, Inc.

• Serverless Lover

• Loves building all kinds of
multimedia services

• Software Engineer @ Vingle

• https://github.com/mooyoul

• https://mooyoul.github.io
Who am i?

Topics
• Lambdaless
• What’s Lambdaless? When to use? How?
• Real-world Examples
• AWS CDK
• What's AWS CDK, How to use that?
• Unlocking new possibilities

Lambda-less
=
Serverless architecture
without Lambda

https://github.com/
mooyoul/lambdaless

Recap How Lambda can
be called via HTTP
endpoint

How Lambda invoked via
HTTP
AWS Lambda Amazon S3
Role
Internet
Amazon API Gateway
Role
Users
GET https://api-id.execute-api.amazonaws.com/stage/path

HTTP
Role
Internet
Amazon API Gateway
Role
Users
Call AWS Service API

HTTP
Role
Internet
Amazon API Gateway
Role
Users
Get ﬁle contents by calling GetObject

HTTP
Role
Internet
Amazon API Gateway
Role
Users
Let’s focus this part

API Gateway
can
call AWS Service APIs

If you need to build an URL
shortener service,
What will you do?

URL Shortener requirements
• Create Shorten ID and Store original URL
• Redirect to original URL if exists
• Collect visitor statistics

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/how-to-page-redirect.html

S3 built-in feature

Turn on Access Log & Run ETL through Athena

Users
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon Cloudfront
Amazon S3
AWS Lambda
Lookup shorten id
and redirect
Store original URL
with shorten id
Store access logs

Lambda just do
simple tasks ☎

Rethink Service
Architecture 👀

Users
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon Cloudfront
Amazon S3
Lookup shorten id
and redirect
Store access logs
Store original URL
with shorten id

Set destination
w/ path parameter

Assign Random ID  
by referencing Request ID

Set object content with additional data

Create shorten url of  
https://www.vingle.net/mooyoul

Bring API Gateway as
First Class

At Vingle,
We have multiple Media
formats

Embedded Video
Youtube
Vimeo
Naver TV Twitch Clip
Twitch VideoV LIVE

We access webpages
from Virginia Region

We had issues with
some websites 😭

Access denied due to Firewall Policy
(They blocked some N. Virginia CIDRs)
(Actually we got 403 Forbidden)

Timeouts due to
poor internet connectivity

Users
Amazon API GatewayAmazon Cloudfront
AWS Lambda
3rd Party Website

Hidden parts
• Dependency management
• If axios is updated, We need to update axios dependency and deploy function
• Runtime management
• If Node.js runtime reaches EOL, We need to update lambda runtime and deploy
function
• Monitoring
• We need to monitor Lambda metrics
• Wasting Money
• Most of execution time: Just waiting for response
• Performance overhead & Size limitations

I don’t want to manage
Lambda either 😫

API Gateway
can
proxy requests 🙌

https://github.com/
mooyoul/lambdaless/tree/
master/proxy

You should build
subscription API 🗞

Users
Amazon API GatewayAmazon Cloudfront
AWS Lambda
Amazon Dynamo DB
Amazon RDS

https://github.com/
mooyoul/lambdaless/tree/
master/email-subscription

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-data-api-for-amazon-aurora-serverless/

More use cases
• Expose Kinesis Firehose endpoint to collect data
• Collect external incoming webhook payload (e.g. SendGrid Events, Slack
Outgoing Webhook)
• Expose Amazon IoT Data endpoint to publish events
• Public Real-time messaging
• Public Event Pub/Sub Channel
• Expose Step Functions Execution endpoint
• Any else AWS API can be invoked via API Gateway
• e.g. SNS, SQS, AppSync

More real-world implementations
👇
https://github.com/mooyoul/
lambdaless

Anything else?
• Securing API Gateway
• API Key
• Cognito Integration
• Parameter Validation
• Supports OpenAPI Schema to validate payload
• Parameter Mapping
• Context Parameters

Bonus: Lambdaless
Scheduled Task
• Setup Cron Rule from CloudWatch Events
• Publish Cron Trigger Event to SNS topic
• Subscribe SNS topic and Notify Event to HTTP
Endpoint (Webhook)
• Use Webhook Endpoint as API Gateway
• It’s possible in theory, but not recommended!

Lambdaless is
NOT 
a silver bullet

When to use Lambdaless
• Super simple Task
• Proxy
• Mock API
• Call single AWS Service API

When NOT to use
Lambdaless
• Anything else of “When to use Lambdaless”
• Require complex business logic
• Require data join
• Require computation
• Require non-interactive event triggers (e.g.
DynamoDB Callback)

Recap: Lambdaless
• What’s Lambdaless?
• Serverless Architecture without Lambda
• Use API Gateway as ﬁrst class
• When to use Lambdaless?
• Super simple task only
• Use-cases
• URL Shortener Service, Basic CRUD API (DynamoDB), Proxy

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/aws-cdk-developer-preview/

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloud-development-kit-cdk-typescript-and-python-are-now-generally-available/

AWS CDK extends
CloudFormation 🤝

CDK Key Features
• Deﬁne AWS Resources in modern programming
language, not YAML
• TypeScript, Python
• Reusable Template, Abstract the details
• Easy to reference pre-existing AWS Resources

CDK Key Features
• Built-in CLI provides seamless development experience
• Easy Deploy & Packaging
• Build Docker Image & Publish to ECR
• Package lambda code
• Extended AWS Resource support
• Issue a ACM Certiﬁcate using DNS Validation

Bootstrap AWS Environment
We have to install “bootstrap stack” per each environment
[Account + Region] to support CDK

Let’s build Lambda
Application with CDK

Install additional
dependencies

Edit Stack
Deﬁne Lambda Function

Edit Stack
Deﬁne API Gateway API

Make Proxy Service to
Logical Resource

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/containers-and-infrastructure-as-code-like-peanut-butter-and-jelly/

Expand Application code
to provision resources

See also
• https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-cdk-
examples
• https://cdkworkshop.com/

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