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AWS SDK for Node.js (Preview)

118 points by jeffbarr 14y ago

thegoleffect 14y ago
Thanks for hosting it on Github, Jeff. Waiting for more examples though (esp. for EC2).
- lsegal 14y ago
  What specific kinds of examples are you looking for? If we know, we can write better guide docs. You might want to open an issue on http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues with suggestions-- guides are hosted there right now.
PhrosTT 14y ago
While I suppose this is good news... It also means I now get to recode my app off third party libraries so damnnit.
- alessioalex 14y ago
  I don't think you need to do that at the moment, this is just a developer preview. Just wait and see how things evolve. At the moment https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum still seems like a much much better SDK for AWS ;)
  - PhrosTT 14y ago
    yeah actually i opted to stay on my current npm package. looks like this requires specifying datatypes for each field in dynamo whereas my current one just lets me blindly dump objects.
techwraith 14y ago
This is really cool, but the terminology used could use a once over: - "The SDK is available as an npm (Node Packaged Module)" - "while keeping you from having to deal with threads, polling, timeouts, and event loops" "npm" stands for "Node Package Manager", and Node.js definitely uses an event loop. I'll definitely get some use out of this SDK though.
- molecule 14y ago
  Contrary to the belief of many, "npm" is not in fact an abbreviation for "Node Package Manager". It is a recursive bacronymic abbreviation for "npm is not an acronym". https://npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#If-npm-is-an-acronym-why-is-it-never-capitalized https://npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#If-npm-is-an-acronym-why-is-i...
- jeffbarr 14y ago
  I do my best to get this stuff right! The top level of npmjs.org says "Node Packaged Modules." What I was trying to say with regard to the event loop is that you don't have to write your own. Let me know what you think of the SDK. The team loves feedback.
  - simonebrunozzi 14y ago
    Great job, Jeff!
  - 9oliYQjP 14y ago
    Overall, I'm happy to have official support from AWS. Are there any plans to support credentials via IAM roles? It looks like the two options right now are to set environment variables or read credentials from disk. I was just about to look into adding this capability to livelycode's aws-lib.
    - sha90 14y ago
      Open an issue for IAM roles in the GitHub issue tracker (http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues). It seems like we want this, so opening an issue will give us all a better way to track the feature.
  - 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
    Do you accept pull requests? I've being maintaining my own node.js to AWS stuff for the last 18 months. I may know a thing, or two, about the AWS APIs.
ladon86 14y ago
I'd like to see the addition a nice API for Amazon SQS.
- simonebrunozzi 14y ago
  Any specific reason why you need this? Can you explain the use case?
rgarcia 14y ago
Even if there are already about twenty AWS libraries on NPM, this is a welcome addition. One nasty part of the Node.js ecosystem is the elevated risk that the owner of a library you depend on goes AWOL. For some reason (maybe the low barrier to publishing with github + npm) this risk is incredibly high with Node.js libraries. So it's nice to see AWS put their weight behind this. It's also nice to see a language-specific library that doesn't layer on a bunch of opinions/abstractions on top of the underlying HTTP API. Makes it a lot easier to grok, debug, and leverage existing documentation. If there's anyone from AWS trolling these parts...will there ever be support for Node.js in Beanstalk?
- 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
  Not all the owners go AWOL, especially for pieces of code that were created for the purpose of going into production. In fact, the lack of official SDK support is the actual cause of so many alternatives. For some of us, it creates a proper foundation in the long run. For example, I don't have the actual time to implement an end-to-end SDK. But hacking some code to get the job done was possible, while others found my hacks actually useful. It isn't ideal, but the World itself is far from that.
  - alessioalex 14y ago
    Here's a good response from such an owner: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W4TeD_8Dyt4 https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W...
    - 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
      Actually I am such an owner. I'm interested to see if the AWS SDK could be used as foundation, even though my own implementation is just a thin wrapper plus an S3 client, most of the time doing the low level plumbing (such as request signing).
- mirkok 14y ago
  there are quite a few people depending on aws-lib (https://github.com/livelycode/aws-lib https://github.com/livelycode/aws-lib). So maybe we could re-use the base of the official SDK but retaining aws-lib's API.
alessioalex 14y ago
At the moment I'm using https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum It's fantastic and supports a billion services already, besides providing tons of useful examples. Before the AWS SDK matures, I don't think I'll be moving away from this library (even then I'm not sure). What I don't like in this SDK it that it has its own promise thing. I just want to be able to write in a callback style, and IF I don't want that I can easily make my own abstractions. (more about this here: https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/2 https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/2 ) Another thing to be considered before making the "final" release would be to support more services: Route53, SNS, SES etc.

118 points by jeffbarr 14y ago

thegoleffect 14y ago

Thanks for hosting it on Github, Jeff. Waiting for more examples though (esp. for EC2).

lsegal 14y ago
What specific kinds of examples are you looking for? If we know, we can write better guide docs. You might want to open an issue on http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues with suggestions-- guides are hosted there right now.

PhrosTT 14y ago

While I suppose this is good news... It also means I now get to recode my app off third party libraries so damnnit.

alessioalex 14y ago
I don't think you need to do that at the moment, this is just a developer preview. Just wait and see how things evolve. At the moment https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum still seems like a much much better SDK for AWS ;)
- PhrosTT 14y ago
  yeah actually i opted to stay on my current npm package. looks like this requires specifying datatypes for each field in dynamo whereas my current one just lets me blindly dump objects.

techwraith 14y ago

This is really cool, but the terminology used could use a once over: - "The SDK is available as an npm (Node Packaged Module)" - "while keeping you from having to deal with threads, polling, timeouts, and event loops" "npm" stands for "Node Package Manager", and Node.js definitely uses an event loop. I'll definitely get some use out of this SDK though.

molecule 14y ago
Contrary to the belief of many, "npm" is not in fact an abbreviation for "Node Package Manager". It is a recursive bacronymic abbreviation for "npm is not an acronym". https://npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#If-npm-is-an-acronym-why-is-it-never-capitalized https://npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#If-npm-is-an-acronym-why-is-i...
jeffbarr 14y ago
I do my best to get this stuff right! The top level of npmjs.org says "Node Packaged Modules." What I was trying to say with regard to the event loop is that you don't have to write your own. Let me know what you think of the SDK. The team loves feedback.
- simonebrunozzi 14y ago
  Great job, Jeff!
- 9oliYQjP 14y ago
  Overall, I'm happy to have official support from AWS. Are there any plans to support credentials via IAM roles? It looks like the two options right now are to set environment variables or read credentials from disk. I was just about to look into adding this capability to livelycode's aws-lib.
  - sha90 14y ago
    Open an issue for IAM roles in the GitHub issue tracker (http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues http://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues). It seems like we want this, so opening an issue will give us all a better way to track the feature.
- 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
  Do you accept pull requests? I've being maintaining my own node.js to AWS stuff for the last 18 months. I may know a thing, or two, about the AWS APIs.

ladon86 14y ago

I'd like to see the addition a nice API for Amazon SQS.

simonebrunozzi 14y ago
Any specific reason why you need this? Can you explain the use case?

rgarcia 14y ago

Even if there are already about twenty AWS libraries on NPM, this is a welcome addition. One nasty part of the Node.js ecosystem is the elevated risk that the owner of a library you depend on goes AWOL. For some reason (maybe the low barrier to publishing with github + npm) this risk is incredibly high with Node.js libraries. So it's nice to see AWS put their weight behind this. It's also nice to see a language-specific library that doesn't layer on a bunch of opinions/abstractions on top of the underlying HTTP API. Makes it a lot easier to grok, debug, and leverage existing documentation. If there's anyone from AWS trolling these parts...will there ever be support for Node.js in Beanstalk?

1SaltwaterC 14y ago
Not all the owners go AWOL, especially for pieces of code that were created for the purpose of going into production. In fact, the lack of official SDK support is the actual cause of so many alternatives. For some of us, it creates a proper foundation in the long run. For example, I don't have the actual time to implement an end-to-end SDK. But hacking some code to get the job done was possible, while others found my hacks actually useful. It isn't ideal, but the World itself is far from that.
- alessioalex 14y ago
  Here's a good response from such an owner: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W4TeD_8Dyt4 https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/nodejs/W...
  - 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
    Actually I am such an owner. I'm interested to see if the AWS SDK could be used as foundation, even though my own implementation is just a thin wrapper plus an S3 client, most of the time doing the low level plumbing (such as request signing).
mirkok 14y ago
there are quite a few people depending on aws-lib (https://github.com/livelycode/aws-lib https://github.com/livelycode/aws-lib). So maybe we could re-use the base of the official SDK but retaining aws-lib's API.

alessioalex 14y ago

At the moment I'm using https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum https://github.com/appsattic/node-awssum It's fantastic and supports a billion services already, besides providing tons of useful examples. Before the AWS SDK matures, I don't think I'll be moving away from this library (even then I'm not sure). What I don't like in this SDK it that it has its own promise thing. I just want to be able to write in a callback style, and IF I don't want that I can easily make my own abstractions. (more about this here: https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/2 https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-js/issues/2 ) Another thing to be considered before making the "final" release would be to support more services: Route53, SNS, SES etc.