aws-lambda-web-adapter VS powertools-lambda-python

In the next part of the series I'll make the introduction to the AWS Lambda Web Adapter and explain how our Serverless Spring Boot application on AWS can make use of it.

Lambda Web Adapter (LWA) is an open-source project that enables running Web apps on Lambda functions without the need to change or adapt the code.

Thanks to the AWS Lambda Web Adapter, the application built as a (good old) REST/HTTP API using a familiar library (in this case, Gin.

Using the excellent Lambda web adapter extension with a container, you can very easily move a function from Lambda to Fargate or Apprunner if cost becomes an issue. This optionality is of high value, and shouldn't be overlooked.

We will use AWS Lambda Web Adapter to run our Node.js Application on AWS Lambda.

For such frameworks, I would look at Lambda Web Adapter (https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-web-adapter/tree/main/examples). Both frameworks have specific examples for them that allow for the execution of those within a Lambda context with few, if any, code changes. For spring, specifically, using Lambda Snapstart can significantly improve cold-start performance. You can read more about Java and Spring framework in this blog post that contains also a code example https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/reducing-java-cold-starts-on-aws-lambda-functions-with-snapstart/ With regards to Flask, you can also use a project like: https://pypi.org/project/flask-lambda/

With the lambda web adapter[1], you shouldn't need to make any code changes for web projects, just some dockerfile changes which are only used if it is running as a lambda, so the same container image should still work on ecs or another cloud. [1]https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-web-adapter

Additionally, there is this tool you can use to use the same image in a lambda and any other container runtime. https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-web-adapter

You can point your platform team to this: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-web-adapter , which they can use to get your service running in Lambda.

Also I suggest to have a look at AWS Lambda PowerTools, which simplifies adopting best practices with Lambda

Python is a natural fit for serverless development. It boasts a vast array of libraries, including Powertools for AWS and robust libraries for data engineers. Its versatility and excellent developer experience make it a top choice for serverless projects, offering a seamless and enjoyable development experience.

Read more: https://docs.powertools.aws.dev/lambda/python/latest/

Imagine a sample Python application returning "hello world" to simulate a successful call. Each call to the application is captured for billing purposes using EMF. Lambda Powertools is used to reduce the amount of code we need to write.

Below is an example of lambda handler code. It is using the highly recommended Powertools for AWS Lambda library to ensure best practices around tracing, logging, metrics, and more. The function gets passed an SNS topic and Slack webhook URL at creation time (via environment variables) to send notifications to. It parses the passed in event information to determine which hostname had it's status changed and what the new status is and sends out notifications.

It's worth noting that these improvements will also impact other libraries and frameworks that rely on Pydantic, such as FastAPI and AWS Lambda Powertools, which could deliver some transitive performance improvements to various projects that don't directly depend on Pydantic themselves.

I had the pleasure of writing and contributing the Parser utility to a fantastic project on Github called AWS Lambda Powertools. We have used this repository previously in the blog series (parts one to three) for logging, tracing and metrics.

We are going to add aws-lambda-powertools as poetry dependency we need. While this is available as Lambda Layer, we are going to use it as a installed dependency for this exercise.

I truly disliked type hints. Working with CDK started to change that for the better and then I discovered AWS Lambda Powertools. It combines multiple things I am passionate about so I became passionate about using the library and improving it. Lambda Powertools utilizes static typing for several of its main features (Parser, Event Sources and Typing).