serverless-express VS serverless-graphql

After building out a GPT powered endpoint, I wanted a low cost way of hosting it. At the time, I came across the serverless-express project https://github.com/vendia/serverless-express/tree/mainline, but no actual starter kits that would allow me to deploy it.

It’s all handled using https://github.com/vendia/serverless-express

Amplify gives an option of using a template and linking the API Endpoint with the Lambda and a connected DynamoDB table. I selected the template, Serverless Espress, which provided a lot of code in the template, though the majority of it felt overly bloated for what was effectively CRUD functionality.

With that in mind, the goal of this library is to be as lightweight as possible. There are other libraries out there that can handle express -> serverless mutation. See Serverless Express for that. If you want to rewrite as little code as possible, that is your best solution. With that being said, if the sole purpose of express is middleware and is only hosting a one-endpoint GraphQL server, I recommend rewriting to utilize this library.

To get Express to run on AWS Lambda the Node http stack needs to be emulated, or a full-blown HTTP/TCP server needs to be started and proxied to. Each of these workarounds require a ton of code from libraries like serverless-express.

Express is a framework/software. Lambda is compute. You can run express in Lambda. Ive done this and it was great. Check out https://github.com/vendia/serverless-express. The cool thing is that it's portable - you can build for one compute environment, and move it to another if it doesnt suit

Yea its fine use https://github.com/vendia/serverless-express since you are using express

Serverless Express - library that makes our "plain" NestJS API play nicely with Serverless

Some people like the Unix philosophy of "Do one thing and do it well" for Lambdas, others would build a monolithic app using a single Lambda with built in "routes". Both designs have pros and cons.

Since then, the ecosystem has changed. Using the Serverless Framework makes deployment simpler. We released the managed Tracetest App making any serverless-based systems simpler to instrument and test. You can now test public-facing apps with no infra overhead!

We see some great results from using these in conjunction with frameworks such as SST or Serverless, and also some real spaghetti from people who organically proliferate 100’s of functions over time and lose track of how they relate to each other or how to update them safely across time and service. Buyer beware!

When we think about AWS serverless service, the first thing that comes to our mind is Lambda function. Yes, the quickest way to deploy this backend Express JS app to AWS is to deploy it as a Lambda function. The easiest way is using Serverless Framework.

Serverless Framework: https://www.serverless.com/

Github | Website

In this example, we're using the serverless framework to quickly set up the Lambda function along with an API gateway for the entry point. The lambda function is a simple Koa REST API with a few functional endpoints.

Naturally, there are several options available to declare your cloud resources. The options with the most popularity are the CDK, AWS CloudFormation, SST, Serverless framework, Terraform, and AWS SAM. There are others, but when talking about Infrastructure as Code (IaC), these are the ones you hear about most often.

1 - Serverless + AWS CDK + Lift: An integration that amps up the traditional Serverless Framework with Lift's static frontend construct and CDK's robust infra definition.

It's a bit easier in Python if you use tools like https://www.serverless.com/. I'm not sure if Rust has something similar yet.

Serverless