SAM Launchpad

A simplified interface that automates common tasks for AWS SAM. You can maintain multiple projects and environments for each.

Project structure

my-serverless-project/
├── package.json
├── README.md
├── sam-launchpad.config.js
└── projects/
    ├── user-authenticator
    │   ├── template.yaml
    └── user-file-processor
        └── template.yaml

Why? My take on serverless

Serverless projects are often service centered and function oriented. Such modularity calls for a mindful separation of concerns. Creating a new serverless project for each module of functionality might not be necessary, it could downgrade performance, increase financial costs and time spent on maintainability.

On the other hand if you don't modularize enough you might end up with a monolithic piece of software. This should be self-explanatory, monolithic architectures and serverless are like oil and water. Putting in some examples: Serverless scales with each use, if you need to spin a bunch of modules just to access an specific functionality you'll be unnecessarily incrementing the time required for completing said operation (thus downgrading performance and increasing costs).

For deployment of new features and code, with AWS you update or create stacks using Cloud Formation, having coupled code means that you'll have to deploy everything every time.

Using sub-projects. Finding the balance is key

How to find the balance when splitting your code into: libraries, lambda functions and sub-projects is up to the developers and the project nature. The root project works as a wrapper for all the sub-projects, providing automation scripts for recurrent tasks (building, testing, validating templates, packaging projects and deploying with SAM).

Getting what you'll need

Before you start you'll need to get all this dependencies.

• Node
• AWS CLI
• AWS SAM

If you can run this command

sam --version
# SAM CLI, version 0.7.0

And you configured your AWS Access Key ID, Secret Access Key and Default region name(recommended).

aws configure
# AWS Access Key ID [****************...]:
# AWS Secret Access Key [****************...]:
# Default region name [None]: us-east-1
# ...

You are ready to start.

Quickstart

• Install SAM-Launchpad in your project npm install sam-launchpad --save-dev

• Create a configuration file sam-launchpad.config.js in your root directory.

// sam-launchpad.config.js
const join = require('path').join;
 
module.exports = {
  "project_name" : "my-serverless-app",
  "projects" : join( __dirname , "./projects" ),
  "commands" : {
    /*
      This commands will be executed once per project in it's local context.
      You're not limited to node and npm commands.
    */
    "build" : "npm i && npm run build",
    "test" : "npm test"
  }
}

• If you run sam-launchpad it will build and test each of your projects with the commands you provided on the config. After that it'll continue validating, packaging and deploying using sam-cli commands.

• If you installed SAM-Launchpad locally in your project you can run it using npm or /node_modules/bin/sam-launchpad.

• If you installed it globally in your machine just run sam-launchpad.

• There are several options you can provide to skip unwanted parts of the process, you can read more about this below.

Cheat sheet

{
// Run the whole thing
"publish": "sam-launchpad",
// Just build
"build": "sam-launchpad --skip-deploy --skip-package --skip-coverage --skip-validation",
// Just run tests
"test": "sam-launchpad --skip-deploy --skip-package --skip-validation --skip-build",
// Just validate the SAM templates
"validate": "sam-launchpad --skip-deploy --skip-package --skip-coverage --skip-build",
// Just run SAM package
"package": "sam-launchpad --skip-deploy --skip-build --skip-coverage --skip-validation",
//Just deploy to Cloud Formation using SAM
"deploy": "sam-launchpad --skip-package --skip-build --skip-coverage --skip-validation"
}

Creating a sub-project

• Sub-projects should be located directly under the base path directory specified in the configuration file.
• A SAM template.yaml file is expected on the proejct root directory.
• Templates should define two basic parameters, Environment and ProjectName:

// /template.yaml
AWSTemplateFormatVersion: ...
Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
Description: ...
 
 
Parameters:
 
  Environment:
    Type: String
  ProjectName:
    Type: String
 
Globals: ...

• Parameter variables are the recommended way for creating multiple stages.
• The name of said folder will be used as suffix in the Cloud Formation stack name.
• If you plan on using the root automation script for building, you must provide the right context on your project to execute the build command you provided on the configuration.
• If you plan on using the root automation script for running tests, you must provide the right context on your project to execute the test command you provided on the configuration.

Multi stack

Using multiple stacks is recommended multi stack approach.

Configuration

project_name

Required yes

Required for naming the Cloud Formation. If you deploy my-test-app that has a sub project named core to --stage qa the resulting stack name would be my-test-app-core-qa.

base_path

Required yes

Directory were all your sub projects are stored (even if you only have 1 project). The sub directories of this path will be treated as sub projects.

For example if you define this base_path.

  ...
  "base_path" : join( __dirname , "./projects" )
  ...

Your structure could look similar to this example:

my-serverless-project/
├── ...
└── projects/
    ├── core
    │   ├── template.yaml
    └── secondary-project
        └── template.yaml

projects

An alias for base_path.

single_project

If true base_path will be the project directory.

Commands

Required yes

You should provide both test and build commands if you plan on using the recursive execution of these tasks.

template_parameters

You can provide extra parameters to your SAM templates.

Options

stage

Default dev

sam-launchpad --stage qa

stop-on-error

Default false It will exit project with code 1 if an error is found.

sam-launchpad --stop-on-error

skip-build

Default false Skips build process

sam-launchpad --skip-build

skip-validation

Default false Skips validation process

sam-launchpad --skip-validation

skip-package

Default false Skips packaging process

sam-launchpad --skip-package

skip-deploy

Default false Skips deployment process

sam-launchpad --skip-deploy

skip-coverage

Default false Skips deployment process

sam-launchpad --skip-coverage

app

Default []

sam-launchpad --app core

sam-launchpad --app core --app secondary-apps

all-apps

Default if app is not provided true

sam-launchpad --all-apps

sam-launchpad --all-apps false

verbose

Default false

sam-launchpad --verbose

Hooks

You can provide additional functions to execute before and after each step:

// sam-launchpad.config.js
const join = require('path').join;
 
module.exports = {
  "project_name" : "my-serverless-app",
  ...
  "commands" : {
    ...
  },
  "hooks" : {
    "before-build" : [
      "echo before build",
      function(opts){
        // A promise is expected
        return new Promise((resolve,reject)=>{
          const {args , apps, config} = opts;
 
          // Do something
 
          // You can either pass on the options after changing or adding
          // attributes.
          // resolve({args, apps, config});
 
          //or return nothing to maintain the options received.
          resolve();
        })
      }
    ]
  }
 
}

An array of commands and or functions is expected.

Available hooks

• before-test
• after-test
• before-build
• after-build
• before-validation
• after-validation
• before-package
• after-package
• before-deploy
• after-deploy