serverless-websockets VS gopher-holes-unlimited

For long running jobs, it is useful to inform the user that something is going on. Nobody likes sitting and waiting hoping that work is being done. To help with this, we provide push notifications via the WebSocket microservice we created in my WebSocket tutorial.

For a real world example, you can check out my repo on AWS WebSockets.

There are two things you must do before configuring a custom domain: purchase your domain name and setup a public hosted zone. These will need to be done manually in order to pick up and deploy the stack contained in part five of the GitHub repo for the WebSocket.

Just like the three previous parts, the work is done ahead of time. To deploy the updates that add user notifications, run the following command in a terminal in the root of the repo on your local machine.

To get started with the spec for our WebSocket, checkout the part-three branch in the serverless-websockets repo in GitHub with the following command:

If you followed part one of this series, you deployed a basic WebSocket into your AWS account. It has the ability to add and remove connections, as well as add and remove subscriptions to specific entities. Today we are going to use a branch in that repo that enhances what we had.

Today we're going to go through an example of a WebSocket written in a SAM template. I chose a SAM template because of how easy it is to deploy a serverless application directly into AWS without the need for 3rd party services.

When you define the backing resources and request schemas in your spec file, SAM will automatically create a huge amount of supporting resources:

If we take my reference application Gopher Holes Unlimited as an example, we see that I have a function that updates an existing gopher and another function that links gophers to gopher holes.

Gopher Holes Unlimited

Any operation that you need to be idempotent and require the full resource data to be provided should be backed by a PUT operation. For example, if we take the update gopher hole endpoint from my reference project Gopher Holes Unlimited, you can see that we overwrite the entire gopher hole resource.

The real key to the success I've had doing this is that I can quickly find my resources from a known entry point, like an API endpoint. I can look at my spec, see that it ties to a specific Lambda function, and go straight there.

With serverless microservices, structure your root-level folders by resource type. Take the Gopher Holes Unlimited reference architecture project as an example.

When talking about data flows, I mean the path through your system a business process follows. If we take an example from Gopher Holes Unlimited, we can see what happens when a new gopher is added to the system.

I'm not a fan of providing theory without practice. So I have revamped my Gopher Holes Unlimited application to show the specifics of how to setup and process jobs.

# My Example Microservice ## Description This is an example README for **Gopher Holes Unlimited** - a fake business but real API that tracks two things: 1. Gophers 2. Holes ## Infrastructure  *Resources currently deployed in Production. This diagram was automatically generated in the CI pipeline* ## Source If you want to check out the source, please visit our [GitHub page](https://github.com/allenheltondev/gopher-holes-unlimited)

We will take an example from my fake business but real API, Gopher Holes Unlimited, where we add a new gopher into the system to be tracked.