powertools-lambda-python VS powertools-lambda-typescript

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).

The Powertools GitHub repository offers nice examples to integrate and learn from. For example here are nice example written in AWS CDK. Following I will list the features I gained some experience with.

Lambda Powertools TypeScript can't be used directly as an ES Modules dependency, but there is an issue open, so please consider adding your +1. For now, it's possible to get by with a require shim or via cjs tricks but it would be great to see native support for ES Modules in Lambda Powertools TypeScript.

for secrets, I would recommend using AWS PowerTools if you can (depending on your language) - https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-powertools-python - https://github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda-powertools-typescript

The documentation for Lambda Powertools TypeScript is pretty good and provides several examples with even more on GitHub.

Last week, AWS announced the beta release of AWS Lambda Powertools Typescript. This is a suite of TypeScript utilities for AWS Lambda functions to enable the adoption of best practices in areas such as structured logging, tracing and custom metrics.