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Show HN: JAWS – A JavaScript and AWS Stack

375 points by ac360 11y ago

ramon 11y ago
Great job, grabbed my attention, I really liked this, but I'm doing so great with gulp that if I used this I really would still need to use gulp because of the optimizations, I'm also using S3 and Lambda, but I like the idea of running aws lambda locally before uploading and the "run a server locally" before upload.
- ac360 11y ago
  Ramon, Could you share some of your gulp optimizations so that I can incorporate them into the project? You don't have to share their code if you don't want to, but if you could write down what the gulp tasks are, I could incorporate them into the JAWS Command Line Interface. Thanks for the positive feedback btw :)
  - ramon 11y ago
    I really liked the concept of your project and it's in my bookmarks already. I can share, can you add me in twitter it's ramonck, I'll write down a paper in Medium sharing the details, I already wrote down the concept of a mobile product I did with Gulp and Lambda I'm about to share in Medium as well, I'll also be glad to share the indepth details of the technology, but I think it will be more productive for you and for others to have it in a single spot. Add me there I'll share in the next week or so. Best Regards,
    - steezeburger 11y ago
      Looking forward to this. Added you.
  - cachesking 11y ago
    This is really interesting. I'd like to use cloud front so I be https
    - ramon 11y ago
      I'm using cloudfront, it's a CDN service (Caching) for S3 when using in this model. Best Regard.
rabbyte 11y ago
This is jawsome. I feel like you're cheating on the "no server" bit with some AWS semantics but you're not the first so, whatever, nice job.
- ramon 11y ago
  It's no server because Lambda is not a server like VPS that you get it up and running 24 hours, it's a service that gets a call and runs your function. You don't have a server up it's a function on the backend. It's being called by the JS SDK on the browser, therefore no server, plain static + function calling architecture. Best,
  - nulltype 11y ago
    Isn't App Engine no server by the same metric? You could make an autoscaling app engine module with some HTTP handlers and it seems like you have the same thing.
    - azinman2 11y ago
      Yup.
    - primigenus 11y ago
      This is roughly what Tailbone does: https://github.com/dataarts/tailbone https://github.com/dataarts/tailbone
  - aikah 11y ago
    > It's no server because Lambda is not a server like VPS that you get it up and running 24 hours, What you say makes no sense. There is a server , you just don't manage it yourself. > it's a function on the backend And where is the "backend" ? that's right , on a server. > It's being called by the JS SDK on the browser, What does the SDK call ? a server when your functions lie. Lambda + api gateway are a BAAS. You might have some logic running in the browser but the lambda functions run @AWS. So there is a server. It's a bit like Couch Apps by the way,except that you can scale at the 'design document level', not just at the 'node level'.
exratione 11y ago
I'm presently about three quarters done with writing one of these myself; Lamdba plus SQS plus arbitrary functions. I have a different take on deployment, going with CloudFormation. Version updates are something you have to think about quite hard with this sort of system. The real challenge is how to manage within the 60 second, 1024 thread limits in a sane way, however. You have to approach application decomposition in a much more rigorous way.
- cayblood 11y ago
  exratione, please consider posting a github link of your approach.
Jonovono 11y ago
This is interesting, thanks for sharing. Was a bit confused about lambda. So this would be cheaper than just having an EC2/DO instance running flask with a couple of endpoints?
- ac360 11y ago
  Absolutely. You pay for EC2/DO even if your app isn't used. With JAWS, you pay only when your app is used. Here is Lambdas pricing FYI: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/
  - sologoub 11y ago
    The examples are very interesting, as it's not necessarily cheaper, because if you could handle the same 3 million requests per month with a t2.micro for ~$10 per month, Lambda approach would be close to 2x more expensive. However, the benefit here is that you don't have to provision to peak capacity needs + (some safety fudge factor), thereby having paid for, but idle capacity. It's a very intriguing proposition for new services where you may not be able to optimize costs as much for fear of losing up time, but I'm sure it makes a lot of financial sense for AWS. Nothing stopping this from being a win/win though.
    - inopinatus 11y ago
      Here's a problem with cloud economics. People don't compare apples. Essentially, I am not short $10 but I could use some time back in my week. Getting bogged down in managing servers, or a fleet of instances, or the devops stack to automate a fleet of instances; it's all a time sink with either an actual cost or at the very least an opportunity cost, orders of magnitude beyond that $10/month. This is especially true for organisations where provisioning an instance requires an epic chain of approvals "because it's a server". Unfortunate but all too common. Of course if you were planning to become (or already are) a competent devopsy admin then provisioning instances is not necessarily a waste of your time. For everyone else, platform-as-a-service such as Lambda can be an huge win. Sure, there's still a tipping point but it's much greater when time, rather than simply price, is considered. On the other hand, and contrary to the Amazon-is-scalping-me gripes I hear on HN all too frequently, my experience has consistently been that AWS want you to minimise costs due to design. Every well-run business knows the long-term virtuous cycle of satisfied & continuing customers far outweighs a short-term revenue grab. ObDisclosure: I am a former AWS architecture manager but do not speak on behalf of my ex-employer.
krschultz 11y ago
Note that you should be wary of AWS Lambda limits. We blew through them on our first day directing traffic on a system we were testing with Lambda. They were able to increase our limits a few days later, but something to think about before you base your whole stack around it. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html
- ac360 11y ago
  Those will be raised soon. AWS introduced API Gateway because they want back-ends being built on AWS Lambda. They will raise the limits, but this is all bleeding-edge tech and they are likely moving forward with caution.
  - chadmaughan 11y ago
    They've already increased it from the originally published concurrent requests per function limit (originally 50, now 100) [1] We'd like the "Total size of all the deployment packages that can be uploaded per account" increased. Since you have to "require in" (as you put it) all your dependencies with each published function it's plausible to hit that limit pretty quick. The average node module is 1.6MB [2]. If your functions have 3 dependencies, you're near 5MB. That limits you to ~300 functions. That initially seems like a lot until you realize you may have to start breaking up complex logic into multiple functions to hit time limits. You also might need to maintain multiple versions for backwards compatibility (think v1 endpoints). And if you use Java 8, you're just screwed. That size limit can be hit quick. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20150315092544/http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150315092544/http://docs.aws.a... [2] - https://www.npmjs.com/package/npmjs-stats https://www.npmjs.com/package/npmjs-stats
    - deegles 11y ago
      It might be possible to write a wrapper function that pulls a larger function from S3. I think you get up to 500mb of /tmp storage per function. Obviously the initial startup time would be atrocious but if you have a high enough TPS it wouldn't be hit too often. I could also see Lambda adding a paid-for option to keep a function "warmed up" at all times.
mands 11y ago
Great work - looks like a really useful piece to help you quickly get going using the AWS stack and Lambda/JS. The biggest issue I've always found is the extra steps between writing your code and getting it onto a server. The "no server" movement definitely seems to be gathering steam, with Firebase and Parse on the data side and Lambda (augmented with JAWS and others) on the computation side. Am excited to see what this area will bring, in particular due to the combination of scalable hosting and containerisation. (Plug - we're working on StackHut (http://www.stackhut.com http://www.stackhut.com) in the "no server" space that provides a language-agnostic Lambda-like platform (currently JS/ES6 and Python with Ruby soon) that's powered by Docker and is accessible via JSON-RPC over HTTP. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and the "no server" space in general.)
- Jake232 11y ago
  Tried your public demo's, they don't seem to work.
  - mands 11y ago
    Thanks so much for looking, sorry that the public APIs didn't work correctly. I've ran a few tests and most work apart from the `pdf-tools` demo for converting PDFs - thanks for raising that to our attention (the life of a beta product!). Can I ask what browser you're running?
  - pea 11y ago
    Hi Jake! Sorry you're having issues. I'm presuming you're on Sky in the UK? They are currently blocking HTTPS on various CloudFlare endpoints (such as ours!) We're attempting to get this sorted ASAP. Let me know if this isn't the case! Cheers -- Leo
    - Jake232 11y ago
      I am on Sky in the UK, looks like it is an ISP issue then. I'll keep an eye on you guys though, I'm a big fan of being able to just run functions on-demand like this. I used to use PiCloud extensively before it was bought out.
aikah 11y ago
It's a bit what Couch Apps where supposed to be, without the vendor-locking part... > no server But you have to rely on AWS infrastructure. So what you meant is no server management.
- rajington 11y ago
  the pricing difference is huge too, AWS's PaaS Elastic Beanstalk took away the "server management" part for the most part but this allows a lot of power when you need it and absolutely no costs when you don't.
zer00eyz 11y ago
First of all nice work! Second there is already a product out there called jaws: http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS The last time I checked (and my information is very dated, 5+ years) this was a fairly popular piece of software in the blind community. I also do not know the status of trademark around the term. If you were going to change names, its early days for you now would be the good time to do it.
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  JAWS the screen reader is still quite popular, though an open-source one called NVDA (http://www.nvaccess.org/ http://www.nvaccess.org/) is on the rise. I doubt that FS will come after this project for trademark infringement, since it's not a threat to them, not even in the same field.
  - zer00eyz 11y ago
    I agree with you "minimal" risk assessment. However we have all see companies do stupid things. I don't remember off hand if you are REQUIRED to defend a trademark for it to be enforceable.
    - xeromal 11y ago
      You are REQUIRED or you lose it. It is what has caused a lot of lawsuits in the first place.
  - tomphoolery 11y ago
    What about JSAWS? :) (pronounced "J-Sauce" in case you were wondering)
- ac360 11y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! I'm not affiliated with Amazon, nor do I know anyone over there. I'm a freelancer in Oakland, CA., and my goal is merely to offer some open source code to help people take advantage of emerging tech so that they can build ridiculously cheap and scalable web apps.
Murali4ever 11y ago
this is really cutting edge stuff, great job. Would be event cool to include polymer webcomponents (on client side) , AWS Cognito for authentication along with this.
DocSavage 11y ago
Thanks for sharing. I've just started work on a server-free AWS architecture, but instead of using the AWS API Gateway feeding into Lambda, I'm working on static pages with AWS SDK for Javascript (served from S3) talking directly to Cognito, RDS and S3 with lambda for async processing: https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-browser/ https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-browser/ I'm surprised I haven't seen more discussion of SDK for Javascript since it removes a lot of the server requirements. Have you considered using AWS SDK for Javascript, or do you explicitly want a REST API as an abstraction layer? The API certainly provides some advantages if you ever want to migrate off AWS. In my case, the lambda functions get invoked by particular events on RDS, S3, or manual/browser triggers instead of AWS API Gateway invocation.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  I'd like to see this when you get finished. I'm looking for a new way to do static webpages that's fast and hassle free.
  - DocSavage 11y ago
    Unfortunately my client is closely coupled to a venture I'm doing on the side. I won't be open sourcing it. If it's just static web pages you need without mutable data, you can do that directly off Amazon S3. There are lots of blogs and open source projects for that: http://stout.is/ http://stout.is/ https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/48-static-sites-using-aws-s3-cloudfront-and-route-53-1-5 https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/48-static-sites-using-aws... If you sprinkle in AWS SDK for Javascript in the browser, you can handle mutations directly into various persistence services without needing EC2. I'm still very early in my exploration of this approach so I was hoping to see some case study myself. If there's no direct way to invoke lambda from a service event (e.g., an RDS mutation), you could invoke it from the client after returning from the RDS request.
  - metabeard 11y ago
    Checkout Jekyll, I’m having a great time building https://github.com/anishavasandani/suchbrooklyn.com https://github.com/anishavasandani/suchbrooklyn.com
ahallock 11y ago
Love this idea, but I wish there were an official integration between Lambda and RDS; I don't want to use DynamoDB.
- ac360 11y ago
  The plan was always to add RDS integration, specifically Aurora support. That plan hasn't changed! Just need to find more time for open-source projects :P
  - alexbilbie 11y ago
    I believe to support RDS in Lambda you'll either need to dynamically add the Lambda instance's public IP address to your RDS security group (and remove it once complete) on each run or make the RDS instance open to a large number of AWS IP ranges^1 [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-ip-ranges.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-ip-ranges.h...
    - ac360 11y ago
      Hmmm, I'll look into this. Either way, I'm sure Amazon is aware that RDS in Lambdas is a good thing, and they will continue to make this and their other tools easier. We'll get there!
techpeace 11y ago
Excellent work, thanks for sharing!
hoprocker 11y ago
Great experiment here. Lambda has been intriguing me for a while. More and more, as I scope out work for clients, I'm finding bits that could probably be run as Lambda processes instead of requiring an entire EC2 instance. This is kind of like taking a REST interface to a natural extreme.
- ac360 11y ago
  Agreed. I think of it as "cloud computing, fully realized".
impostervt 11y ago
Ha, been working on something similar. If you get a chance, take a look. Maybe we can collaborate. https://github.com/johntitus/hocus https://github.com/johntitus/hocus
xeromal 11y ago
I've been trying to find a core example of how Jaws works without having to download anything. Could you include an example in your readme of an example API using lambda? Even some pseudocode would help me understand.
- ac360 11y ago
  Yes, I'm working on an overview video now.
thallium205 11y ago
And the move towards Google App Engine continues...
- mrtron 11y ago
  If App Engine had some neat AWS features early on, it could have done really well. I think App Engine was one too many hops away from 'mainstream dev', but is probably very close now.
- bsaul 11y ago
  Maybe a cloud platform has to offer everything. So, in the same sense gce was a move from app engine to ec2, they are both converging to the same "anything you want as a service" offer.
aakilfernandes 11y ago
Sounds interesting. What kind of apps make the most sense for JAWS?
- alexbilbie 11y ago
  I've got to implement a simple site this week for our customers to be able to upload photos to S3 and then I need an API endpoint to list these photos. JAWS seems like a great solution for this.
dmmalam 11y ago
Does AWS API Gateway support Websocket endpoint? Would be interesting to created a realtime websocket API, backed by lambda.
- jkarneges 11y ago
  You could probably do this with Fanout.io, which has a WebSocket->HTTP gateway.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
xasos 11y ago
Nice work on the project! Big fan of the graphics also :) Reminds me of Divshot [0], a heroku-like service for hosting static sites. It's great that you can roll your own site, and don't need a middleman to host for you. [0] https://divshot.com/ https://divshot.com/
shaneqful 11y ago
Anyone else immediately think of the screen-reader
reilly3000 11y ago
I've been looking for something like this within a ClojureScript workflow. With the new JS compiler it seems not too far off. This is very cool. I would love to see more aws resources exposed as well through JAWS like dynamo or RDS.
- ac360 11y ago
  JAWS uses DynamoDB. Aurora (RDS) support is coming soon!
  - reilly3000 11y ago
    sweet!
Skywing 11y ago
I was looking into using lambda functions called in response to an S3 event. Specifically, I wanted to create a record in my SQL database after a file is uploaded to S3. Users are uploading directly to S3 using pre-signed requests, so I needed some way to step in and create a database record after they actually perform the upload to S3. S3 supports this via several methods, one of which is the lambda functions, but when looking into lambda functions there was no way to have the code access my SQL database internally, I would have had to make my SQL database open to the world. I didn't find any IAM rules etc to enable lambda functions to access my SQL database resources. I'd be curious to see how this is handled by this JAWS work flow.
- cddotdotslash 11y ago
  I've also needed to have Lambda functions access databases on an RDS instance within a VPC and haven't been able to do so without opening the database up to everyone. Seems like a feature they should think of adding soon.
Nitramp 11y ago
Woohoo! It's the second coming of stored procedures and PL/SQL! Party like it's 1988! Seriously though, these kinds of architectures come at a cost. The website's claims are either misleading, or the authors haven't understood the problem domain. E.g.: Each of your API URLs points to one of these Lambda functions. This way, the code for each API Route is completely isolated, enabling you to develop/update/configure/deploy/maintain code for specific API urls at any time without affecting any other part of your application(!!!). Even if you add more exclamation marks, you'll still end up with front end code depending on the interface exposed by your backend code, meaning you'll have to do versioned rollouts, except you no longer have a single deployable but a zoo of store proce^W^Wlambda functions, with unclear interdependencies and (usually) no proper versioning or tracking. This might be the right architecture for certain apps, but it's not the easy win/win that's presented here.
- ac360 11y ago
  Up next, I will add the ability to define your entire JAWS API in JSON via Swagger. Swagger JSON can be imported to create/update your REST API instantly via AWS API Gateway. Meaning, you can still do larger, versioned roll-outs by simply updating the JSON in your Swagger file. This will give beautiful structure and simplicity to the JAWS workflow. The single deployable server you advocate is a single point of failure.
  - Nitramp 11y ago
    I'm sure you'll further improve this, good luck! The single deployable server you advocate is a single point of failure. I'm not talking about a deployable server, I'm talking about a deployable as a unit of deployment, e.g. a war archive. A deployable is a compile time artefact, a single point of failure is a runtime concept. In that sense, saying a deployable was a single point of failure is like saying a line of code is a single point of failure.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- angrow 11y ago
Nitramp 11y ago
Woohoo! It's the second coming of stored procedures and PL/SQL! Party like it's 1988! Seriously though, these kinds of architectures come at a cost. The website's claims are either misleading, or the authors haven't understood the problem domain. E.g.: Each of your API URLs points to one of these Lambda functions. This way, the code for each API Route is completely isolated, enabling you to develop/update/configure/deploy/maintain code for specific API urls at any time without affecting any other part of your application(!!!). Even if you add more exclamation marks, you'll still end up with front end code depending on the interface exposed by your backend code, meaning you'll have to do versioned rollouts, except you no longer have a single deployable but a zoo of store proce^W^Wlambda functions. This might be the right architecture for certain apps, but it's not the easy win/win that's presented here.
silverlight 11y ago
Is it really true that Lambdas can take 5 minutes to start up? Doesn't that rule them out as useful for things like running a website (instead of just background jobs)? Or does the article mean 5 minutes from the first time you deploy a new one to the time it's available, but after that new lambdas can be spun up in milliseconds to server each request?
- ac360 11y ago
  No, that is not true. While AWS Lambda has cold-start issues, they can be mitigated. While AWS continues to improve Lambda performance (it's still early tech), I've started an "Optimization" section in the wiki, detailing how everyone can get better performance out of JAWS. Further, JAWS is optimized for AWS Lambda performance.
  - silverlight 11y ago
    Oh, okay, I must have misread the article then. Sounds good :-)
curiousjorge 11y ago
Yes! Yes! Yes! Now I just wish there was Python support.
joeyspn 11y ago
Really cool... Now we just need longer Lambda execution times (current limit is 60s) and a proper crontab. For a complete auth flow you can also check: https://github.com/danilop/LambdAuth https://github.com/danilop/LambdAuth It would be nice to integrate some ideas from LambdAuth into JAWS.
- ac360 11y ago
  I'll check out LambdAuth. To get around execution time limits, invoke another Lambda within your current Lambda function.
- danilop 11y ago
  Hi, I am the author of LambdAuth and would be more than happy to help! JAWS is both interesting and promising!
mk00 11y ago
this idea is terrible
- ac360 11y ago
  Thanks :)
foolinaround 11y ago
This seems very convenient... Is there some blog/resource that provides an estimate of the pricing when we go this route, instead of a seperate server for the APIs. I would like to know the rough pricing in an order of magnitude level? Would it be twice as expensive as a django app for an application with light usage, etc? TIA!
imechura 11y ago
You may want to reconsider the name since JAWS is widley known as the defacto application for accessibility screen readers. As far as legal stuff goes the american federation of the blind has been known to litigate against technology companies.
sigmonsays 11y ago
Is this an april fools joke in August?
- desdiv 11y ago
  What's so funny about this?
  - tycho01 11y ago
    the name combined with the shark!
reedlaw 11y ago
Is there a way to use a file system-backed storage with this? For example, I would love to create a web frontend for ledger [1]. Ledger only reads text files but for a frontend to be useful it would need to write entries to files. 1. http://www.ledger-cli.org/ http://www.ledger-cli.org/
- rajington 11y ago
  'getObject' and 'putObject' using the JS AWS S3 SDK on Lambda, triggered by the API Gateway: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/S3.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/S3.ht...
  - reedlaw 11y ago
    Is there an append function? Otherwise it seems like it will have to send the entire file for each incremental write.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
ac360 11y ago
Just added a section in JAWS Optimization on the AWS Pop-Up Loft because it's a tremendous resource and I don't think many people know about it. Since this page is so popular, I'll paste the section in here: AWS Pop-Up Loft AWS has an office/loft in downtown San Francisco where you can meet with an AWS engineer for free to discuss your project and your use of AWS services. It's an incredibly valuable resource, but I don't think many people know about it. All you have to do is schedule a meeting in advance. Meetings can last up to 1 hour and can be scheduled M-F during normal business hours. Further, their office and loft is also a free co-working space, as long as you are using AWS services. They have some nice couches and desks and it's a great way to network with other developers who use AWS services. Again, all of this costs nothing. If you're in SF, or traveling there, check it out!
adamzubi700 11y ago
http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/useful-books-on-networking-programming.html http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/useful-books-on-netwo...
jitix 11y ago
Seems great for cloud applications. Only thing I would worry about is vendor lock in.
alpacaaa 11y ago
This thing is awesome, thanks for sharing!
wampler 11y ago
There's a server here -- it's just that it is not yours.
- findjashua 11y ago
  While I understand the need to give a snappy comment, does this really contribute any value to the discussion? It's obvious that OP means develop apps without dealing with servers. I don't think anyone would imagine that the entire app is running without any servers at all. Please reconsider leaving this comment here.
joeevans1000 11y ago
Jaws already exists as a software project, for the blind. Perhaps I am exposing ignorance about the needs of the blind community, but it would seem to me that a primarily important piece of software for them could be more confusing to find and update and so on if another piece of software appears with the same name. Maybe you should consider changing the name of your software before it's too late? It's possible that your Jaws may, in the long run, cause considerable confusion for the users of the pre-existing Jaws software. I'm making a case based on empathy rather than trademark law and so on.
kevindeasis 11y ago
beautiful, this will be fun to try out!

375 points by ac360 11y ago

ramon 11y ago

Great job, grabbed my attention, I really liked this, but I'm doing so great with gulp that if I used this I really would still need to use gulp because of the optimizations, I'm also using S3 and Lambda, but I like the idea of running aws lambda locally before uploading and the "run a server locally" before upload.

ac360 11y ago
Ramon, Could you share some of your gulp optimizations so that I can incorporate them into the project? You don't have to share their code if you don't want to, but if you could write down what the gulp tasks are, I could incorporate them into the JAWS Command Line Interface. Thanks for the positive feedback btw :)
- ramon 11y ago
  I really liked the concept of your project and it's in my bookmarks already. I can share, can you add me in twitter it's ramonck, I'll write down a paper in Medium sharing the details, I already wrote down the concept of a mobile product I did with Gulp and Lambda I'm about to share in Medium as well, I'll also be glad to share the indepth details of the technology, but I think it will be more productive for you and for others to have it in a single spot. Add me there I'll share in the next week or so. Best Regards,
  - steezeburger 11y ago
    Looking forward to this. Added you.
- cachesking 11y ago
  This is really interesting. I'd like to use cloud front so I be https
  - ramon 11y ago
    I'm using cloudfront, it's a CDN service (Caching) for S3 when using in this model. Best Regard.

rabbyte 11y ago

This is jawsome. I feel like you're cheating on the "no server" bit with some AWS semantics but you're not the first so, whatever, nice job.

ramon 11y ago
It's no server because Lambda is not a server like VPS that you get it up and running 24 hours, it's a service that gets a call and runs your function. You don't have a server up it's a function on the backend. It's being called by the JS SDK on the browser, therefore no server, plain static + function calling architecture. Best,
- nulltype 11y ago
  Isn't App Engine no server by the same metric? You could make an autoscaling app engine module with some HTTP handlers and it seems like you have the same thing.
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Yup.
  - primigenus 11y ago
    This is roughly what Tailbone does: https://github.com/dataarts/tailbone https://github.com/dataarts/tailbone
- aikah 11y ago
  > It's no server because Lambda is not a server like VPS that you get it up and running 24 hours, What you say makes no sense. There is a server , you just don't manage it yourself. > it's a function on the backend And where is the "backend" ? that's right , on a server. > It's being called by the JS SDK on the browser, What does the SDK call ? a server when your functions lie. Lambda + api gateway are a BAAS. You might have some logic running in the browser but the lambda functions run @AWS. So there is a server. It's a bit like Couch Apps by the way,except that you can scale at the 'design document level', not just at the 'node level'.

exratione 11y ago

I'm presently about three quarters done with writing one of these myself; Lamdba plus SQS plus arbitrary functions. I have a different take on deployment, going with CloudFormation. Version updates are something you have to think about quite hard with this sort of system. The real challenge is how to manage within the 60 second, 1024 thread limits in a sane way, however. You have to approach application decomposition in a much more rigorous way.

cayblood 11y ago
exratione, please consider posting a github link of your approach.

Jonovono 11y ago

This is interesting, thanks for sharing. Was a bit confused about lambda. So this would be cheaper than just having an EC2/DO instance running flask with a couple of endpoints?

ac360 11y ago
Absolutely. You pay for EC2/DO even if your app isn't used. With JAWS, you pay only when your app is used. Here is Lambdas pricing FYI: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/
- sologoub 11y ago
  The examples are very interesting, as it's not necessarily cheaper, because if you could handle the same 3 million requests per month with a t2.micro for ~$10 per month, Lambda approach would be close to 2x more expensive. However, the benefit here is that you don't have to provision to peak capacity needs + (some safety fudge factor), thereby having paid for, but idle capacity. It's a very intriguing proposition for new services where you may not be able to optimize costs as much for fear of losing up time, but I'm sure it makes a lot of financial sense for AWS. Nothing stopping this from being a win/win though.
  - inopinatus 11y ago
    Here's a problem with cloud economics. People don't compare apples. Essentially, I am not short $10 but I could use some time back in my week. Getting bogged down in managing servers, or a fleet of instances, or the devops stack to automate a fleet of instances; it's all a time sink with either an actual cost or at the very least an opportunity cost, orders of magnitude beyond that $10/month. This is especially true for organisations where provisioning an instance requires an epic chain of approvals "because it's a server". Unfortunate but all too common. Of course if you were planning to become (or already are) a competent devopsy admin then provisioning instances is not necessarily a waste of your time. For everyone else, platform-as-a-service such as Lambda can be an huge win. Sure, there's still a tipping point but it's much greater when time, rather than simply price, is considered. On the other hand, and contrary to the Amazon-is-scalping-me gripes I hear on HN all too frequently, my experience has consistently been that AWS want you to minimise costs due to design. Every well-run business knows the long-term virtuous cycle of satisfied & continuing customers far outweighs a short-term revenue grab. ObDisclosure: I am a former AWS architecture manager but do not speak on behalf of my ex-employer.

krschultz 11y ago

Note that you should be wary of AWS Lambda limits. We blew through them on our first day directing traffic on a system we were testing with Lambda. They were able to increase our limits a few days later, but something to think about before you base your whole stack around it. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html

ac360 11y ago
Those will be raised soon. AWS introduced API Gateway because they want back-ends being built on AWS Lambda. They will raise the limits, but this is all bleeding-edge tech and they are likely moving forward with caution.
- chadmaughan 11y ago
  They've already increased it from the originally published concurrent requests per function limit (originally 50, now 100) [1] We'd like the "Total size of all the deployment packages that can be uploaded per account" increased. Since you have to "require in" (as you put it) all your dependencies with each published function it's plausible to hit that limit pretty quick. The average node module is 1.6MB [2]. If your functions have 3 dependencies, you're near 5MB. That limits you to ~300 functions. That initially seems like a lot until you realize you may have to start breaking up complex logic into multiple functions to hit time limits. You also might need to maintain multiple versions for backwards compatibility (think v1 endpoints). And if you use Java 8, you're just screwed. That size limit can be hit quick. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20150315092544/http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html https://web.archive.org/web/20150315092544/http://docs.aws.a... [2] - https://www.npmjs.com/package/npmjs-stats https://www.npmjs.com/package/npmjs-stats
  - deegles 11y ago
    It might be possible to write a wrapper function that pulls a larger function from S3. I think you get up to 500mb of /tmp storage per function. Obviously the initial startup time would be atrocious but if you have a high enough TPS it wouldn't be hit too often. I could also see Lambda adding a paid-for option to keep a function "warmed up" at all times.

mands 11y ago

Great work - looks like a really useful piece to help you quickly get going using the AWS stack and Lambda/JS. The biggest issue I've always found is the extra steps between writing your code and getting it onto a server. The "no server" movement definitely seems to be gathering steam, with Firebase and Parse on the data side and Lambda (augmented with JAWS and others) on the computation side. Am excited to see what this area will bring, in particular due to the combination of scalable hosting and containerisation. (Plug - we're working on StackHut (http://www.stackhut.com http://www.stackhut.com) in the "no server" space that provides a language-agnostic Lambda-like platform (currently JS/ES6 and Python with Ruby soon) that's powered by Docker and is accessible via JSON-RPC over HTTP. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and the "no server" space in general.)

Jake232 11y ago
Tried your public demo's, they don't seem to work.
- mands 11y ago
  Thanks so much for looking, sorry that the public APIs didn't work correctly. I've ran a few tests and most work apart from the `pdf-tools` demo for converting PDFs - thanks for raising that to our attention (the life of a beta product!). Can I ask what browser you're running?
- pea 11y ago
  Hi Jake! Sorry you're having issues. I'm presuming you're on Sky in the UK? They are currently blocking HTTPS on various CloudFlare endpoints (such as ours!) We're attempting to get this sorted ASAP. Let me know if this isn't the case! Cheers -- Leo
  - Jake232 11y ago
    I am on Sky in the UK, looks like it is an ISP issue then. I'll keep an eye on you guys though, I'm a big fan of being able to just run functions on-demand like this. I used to use PiCloud extensively before it was bought out.

aikah 11y ago

It's a bit what Couch Apps where supposed to be, without the vendor-locking part... > no server But you have to rely on AWS infrastructure. So what you meant is no server management.

rajington 11y ago
the pricing difference is huge too, AWS's PaaS Elastic Beanstalk took away the "server management" part for the most part but this allows a lot of power when you need it and absolutely no costs when you don't.

zer00eyz 11y ago

First of all nice work! Second there is already a product out there called jaws: http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS The last time I checked (and my information is very dated, 5+ years) this was a fairly popular piece of software in the blind community. I also do not know the status of trademark around the term. If you were going to change names, its early days for you now would be the good time to do it.

mwcampbell 11y ago
JAWS the screen reader is still quite popular, though an open-source one called NVDA (http://www.nvaccess.org/ http://www.nvaccess.org/) is on the rise. I doubt that FS will come after this project for trademark infringement, since it's not a threat to them, not even in the same field.
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  I agree with you "minimal" risk assessment. However we have all see companies do stupid things. I don't remember off hand if you are REQUIRED to defend a trademark for it to be enforceable.
  - xeromal 11y ago
    You are REQUIRED or you lose it. It is what has caused a lot of lawsuits in the first place.
- tomphoolery 11y ago
  What about JSAWS? :) (pronounced "J-Sauce" in case you were wondering)
ac360 11y ago
Thanks for the heads up! I'm not affiliated with Amazon, nor do I know anyone over there. I'm a freelancer in Oakland, CA., and my goal is merely to offer some open source code to help people take advantage of emerging tech so that they can build ridiculously cheap and scalable web apps.

Murali4ever 11y ago

this is really cutting edge stuff, great job. Would be event cool to include polymer webcomponents (on client side) , AWS Cognito for authentication along with this.

DocSavage 11y ago

Thanks for sharing. I've just started work on a server-free AWS architecture, but instead of using the AWS API Gateway feeding into Lambda, I'm working on static pages with AWS SDK for Javascript (served from S3) talking directly to Cognito, RDS and S3 with lambda for async processing: https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-browser/ https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-browser/ I'm surprised I haven't seen more discussion of SDK for Javascript since it removes a lot of the server requirements. Have you considered using AWS SDK for Javascript, or do you explicitly want a REST API as an abstraction layer? The API certainly provides some advantages if you ever want to migrate off AWS. In my case, the lambda functions get invoked by particular events on RDS, S3, or manual/browser triggers instead of AWS API Gateway invocation.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
I'd like to see this when you get finished. I'm looking for a new way to do static webpages that's fast and hassle free.
- DocSavage 11y ago
  Unfortunately my client is closely coupled to a venture I'm doing on the side. I won't be open sourcing it. If it's just static web pages you need without mutable data, you can do that directly off Amazon S3. There are lots of blogs and open source projects for that: http://stout.is/ http://stout.is/ https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/48-static-sites-using-aws-s3-cloudfront-and-route-53-1-5 https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/48-static-sites-using-aws... If you sprinkle in AWS SDK for Javascript in the browser, you can handle mutations directly into various persistence services without needing EC2. I'm still very early in my exploration of this approach so I was hoping to see some case study myself. If there's no direct way to invoke lambda from a service event (e.g., an RDS mutation), you could invoke it from the client after returning from the RDS request.
- metabeard 11y ago
  Checkout Jekyll, I’m having a great time building https://github.com/anishavasandani/suchbrooklyn.com https://github.com/anishavasandani/suchbrooklyn.com

ahallock 11y ago

Love this idea, but I wish there were an official integration between Lambda and RDS; I don't want to use DynamoDB.

ac360 11y ago
The plan was always to add RDS integration, specifically Aurora support. That plan hasn't changed! Just need to find more time for open-source projects :P
- alexbilbie 11y ago
  I believe to support RDS in Lambda you'll either need to dynamically add the Lambda instance's public IP address to your RDS security group (and remove it once complete) on each run or make the RDS instance open to a large number of AWS IP ranges^1 [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-ip-ranges.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-ip-ranges.h...
  - ac360 11y ago
    Hmmm, I'll look into this. Either way, I'm sure Amazon is aware that RDS in Lambdas is a good thing, and they will continue to make this and their other tools easier. We'll get there!

techpeace 11y ago

Excellent work, thanks for sharing!

hoprocker 11y ago

Great experiment here. Lambda has been intriguing me for a while. More and more, as I scope out work for clients, I'm finding bits that could probably be run as Lambda processes instead of requiring an entire EC2 instance. This is kind of like taking a REST interface to a natural extreme.

ac360 11y ago
Agreed. I think of it as "cloud computing, fully realized".

impostervt 11y ago

Ha, been working on something similar. If you get a chance, take a look. Maybe we can collaborate. https://github.com/johntitus/hocus https://github.com/johntitus/hocus

xeromal 11y ago

I've been trying to find a core example of how Jaws works without having to download anything. Could you include an example in your readme of an example API using lambda? Even some pseudocode would help me understand.

ac360 11y ago
Yes, I'm working on an overview video now.

thallium205 11y ago

And the move towards Google App Engine continues...

mrtron 11y ago
If App Engine had some neat AWS features early on, it could have done really well. I think App Engine was one too many hops away from 'mainstream dev', but is probably very close now.
bsaul 11y ago
Maybe a cloud platform has to offer everything. So, in the same sense gce was a move from app engine to ec2, they are both converging to the same "anything you want as a service" offer.

aakilfernandes 11y ago

Sounds interesting. What kind of apps make the most sense for JAWS?

alexbilbie 11y ago
I've got to implement a simple site this week for our customers to be able to upload photos to S3 and then I need an API endpoint to list these photos. JAWS seems like a great solution for this.

dmmalam 11y ago

Does AWS API Gateway support Websocket endpoint? Would be interesting to created a realtime websocket API, backed by lambda.

jkarneges 11y ago
You could probably do this with Fanout.io, which has a WebSocket->HTTP gateway.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

xasos 11y ago

Nice work on the project! Big fan of the graphics also :) Reminds me of Divshot [0], a heroku-like service for hosting static sites. It's great that you can roll your own site, and don't need a middleman to host for you. [0] https://divshot.com/ https://divshot.com/

shaneqful 11y ago

Anyone else immediately think of the screen-reader

reilly3000 11y ago

I've been looking for something like this within a ClojureScript workflow. With the new JS compiler it seems not too far off. This is very cool. I would love to see more aws resources exposed as well through JAWS like dynamo or RDS.

ac360 11y ago
JAWS uses DynamoDB. Aurora (RDS) support is coming soon!
- reilly3000 11y ago
  sweet!

Skywing 11y ago

I was looking into using lambda functions called in response to an S3 event. Specifically, I wanted to create a record in my SQL database after a file is uploaded to S3. Users are uploading directly to S3 using pre-signed requests, so I needed some way to step in and create a database record after they actually perform the upload to S3. S3 supports this via several methods, one of which is the lambda functions, but when looking into lambda functions there was no way to have the code access my SQL database internally, I would have had to make my SQL database open to the world. I didn't find any IAM rules etc to enable lambda functions to access my SQL database resources. I'd be curious to see how this is handled by this JAWS work flow.

cddotdotslash 11y ago
I've also needed to have Lambda functions access databases on an RDS instance within a VPC and haven't been able to do so without opening the database up to everyone. Seems like a feature they should think of adding soon.

Nitramp 11y ago

Woohoo! It's the second coming of stored procedures and PL/SQL! Party like it's 1988! Seriously though, these kinds of architectures come at a cost. The website's claims are either misleading, or the authors haven't understood the problem domain. E.g.: Each of your API URLs points to one of these Lambda functions. This way, the code for each API Route is completely isolated, enabling you to develop/update/configure/deploy/maintain code for specific API urls at any time without affecting any other part of your application(!!!). Even if you add more exclamation marks, you'll still end up with front end code depending on the interface exposed by your backend code, meaning you'll have to do versioned rollouts, except you no longer have a single deployable but a zoo of store proce^W^Wlambda functions, with unclear interdependencies and (usually) no proper versioning or tracking. This might be the right architecture for certain apps, but it's not the easy win/win that's presented here.

ac360 11y ago
Up next, I will add the ability to define your entire JAWS API in JSON via Swagger. Swagger JSON can be imported to create/update your REST API instantly via AWS API Gateway. Meaning, you can still do larger, versioned roll-outs by simply updating the JSON in your Swagger file. This will give beautiful structure and simplicity to the JAWS workflow. The single deployable server you advocate is a single point of failure.
- Nitramp 11y ago
  I'm sure you'll further improve this, good luck! The single deployable server you advocate is a single point of failure. I'm not talking about a deployable server, I'm talking about a deployable as a unit of deployment, e.g. a war archive. A deployable is a compile time artefact, a single point of failure is a runtime concept. In that sense, saying a deployable was a single point of failure is like saying a line of code is a single point of failure.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
angrow 11y ago

Nitramp 11y ago

Woohoo! It's the second coming of stored procedures and PL/SQL! Party like it's 1988! Seriously though, these kinds of architectures come at a cost. The website's claims are either misleading, or the authors haven't understood the problem domain. E.g.: Each of your API URLs points to one of these Lambda functions. This way, the code for each API Route is completely isolated, enabling you to develop/update/configure/deploy/maintain code for specific API urls at any time without affecting any other part of your application(!!!). Even if you add more exclamation marks, you'll still end up with front end code depending on the interface exposed by your backend code, meaning you'll have to do versioned rollouts, except you no longer have a single deployable but a zoo of store proce^W^Wlambda functions. This might be the right architecture for certain apps, but it's not the easy win/win that's presented here.

silverlight 11y ago

Is it really true that Lambdas can take 5 minutes to start up? Doesn't that rule them out as useful for things like running a website (instead of just background jobs)? Or does the article mean 5 minutes from the first time you deploy a new one to the time it's available, but after that new lambdas can be spun up in milliseconds to server each request?

ac360 11y ago
No, that is not true. While AWS Lambda has cold-start issues, they can be mitigated. While AWS continues to improve Lambda performance (it's still early tech), I've started an "Optimization" section in the wiki, detailing how everyone can get better performance out of JAWS. Further, JAWS is optimized for AWS Lambda performance.
- silverlight 11y ago
  Oh, okay, I must have misread the article then. Sounds good :-)

curiousjorge 11y ago

Yes! Yes! Yes! Now I just wish there was Python support.

joeyspn 11y ago

Really cool... Now we just need longer Lambda execution times (current limit is 60s) and a proper crontab. For a complete auth flow you can also check: https://github.com/danilop/LambdAuth https://github.com/danilop/LambdAuth It would be nice to integrate some ideas from LambdAuth into JAWS.

ac360 11y ago
I'll check out LambdAuth. To get around execution time limits, invoke another Lambda within your current Lambda function.
danilop 11y ago
Hi, I am the author of LambdAuth and would be more than happy to help! JAWS is both interesting and promising!

mk00 11y ago

this idea is terrible

ac360 11y ago
Thanks :)

foolinaround 11y ago

This seems very convenient... Is there some blog/resource that provides an estimate of the pricing when we go this route, instead of a seperate server for the APIs. I would like to know the rough pricing in an order of magnitude level? Would it be twice as expensive as a django app for an application with light usage, etc? TIA!

imechura 11y ago

You may want to reconsider the name since JAWS is widley known as the defacto application for accessibility screen readers. As far as legal stuff goes the american federation of the blind has been known to litigate against technology companies.

sigmonsays 11y ago

Is this an april fools joke in August?

desdiv 11y ago
What's so funny about this?
- tycho01 11y ago
  the name combined with the shark!

reedlaw 11y ago

Is there a way to use a file system-backed storage with this? For example, I would love to create a web frontend for ledger [1]. Ledger only reads text files but for a frontend to be useful it would need to write entries to files. 1. http://www.ledger-cli.org/ http://www.ledger-cli.org/

rajington 11y ago
'getObject' and 'putObject' using the JS AWS S3 SDK on Lambda, triggered by the API Gateway: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/S3.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/S3.ht...
- reedlaw 11y ago
  Is there an append function? Otherwise it seems like it will have to send the entire file for each incremental write.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

ac360 11y ago

Just added a section in JAWS Optimization on the AWS Pop-Up Loft because it's a tremendous resource and I don't think many people know about it. Since this page is so popular, I'll paste the section in here: AWS Pop-Up Loft AWS has an office/loft in downtown San Francisco where you can meet with an AWS engineer for free to discuss your project and your use of AWS services. It's an incredibly valuable resource, but I don't think many people know about it. All you have to do is schedule a meeting in advance. Meetings can last up to 1 hour and can be scheduled M-F during normal business hours. Further, their office and loft is also a free co-working space, as long as you are using AWS services. They have some nice couches and desks and it's a great way to network with other developers who use AWS services. Again, all of this costs nothing. If you're in SF, or traveling there, check it out!

adamzubi700 11y ago

http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/useful-books-on-networking-programming.html http://googler700.blogspot.com/2015/07/useful-books-on-netwo...

jitix 11y ago

Seems great for cloud applications. Only thing I would worry about is vendor lock in.

alpacaaa 11y ago

This thing is awesome, thanks for sharing!

wampler 11y ago

There's a server here -- it's just that it is not yours.

findjashua 11y ago
While I understand the need to give a snappy comment, does this really contribute any value to the discussion? It's obvious that OP means develop apps without dealing with servers. I don't think anyone would imagine that the entire app is running without any servers at all. Please reconsider leaving this comment here.

joeevans1000 11y ago

Jaws already exists as a software project, for the blind. Perhaps I am exposing ignorance about the needs of the blind community, but it would seem to me that a primarily important piece of software for them could be more confusing to find and update and so on if another piece of software appears with the same name. Maybe you should consider changing the name of your software before it's too late? It's possible that your Jaws may, in the long run, cause considerable confusion for the users of the pre-existing Jaws software. I'm making a case based on empathy rather than trademark law and so on.

kevindeasis 11y ago

beautiful, this will be fun to try out!