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The problem

I'm approaching AWS, and the first test project will be a website, but i'm struggling on how to approach the resource and the tools to accomplish this. AWS documentation is not really beginner-friendly, so to me it is like to being punched in the face at the first boxe training session.

First attempt

I've installed bot AWS and SAM cli tools, so what I would expect is to be able to create an empty stack at first and adding the resource one by one as the specifications are given/outlined, but instead what I see is that i need to give a template to the tool to create the new stack, but that means I need to know how to write it beforehand and therefore the template specifications for each resource type.

Second attempt

This lead me to create the stack and the related resources from the online console to get the final stack template, but then I need to test every new resource or any updated resource locally, so I have to copy the template from the online console to my machine and run the cli tools with this, but obviously it is not the desired development flow.

What I expected

Coming from a standard/classical web development I would expect to be able to create the project locally, test the related resources locally, version it, and delegate the deployment to the pipeline.

So what?

All this made me understand that "probably" I'm missing somenthing on how to use the aws cli tools and how the development for an aws-hosted application is meant to be done. I'm not seeking for a guide on specific resource types like every single tutorial I've found online, but something on a higher level on how to handle a project development on aws, best practices and stuffs like that, I can then dig deeper on any resource later when needed.

Christian Giupponi
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fudo
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  • `and the first test project will be a website` ... This question is way too broad; I suggest you narrow down your question properly – Paolo Dec 09 '21 at 10:04
  • Read this https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask – Paolo Dec 09 '21 at 10:05
  • I don't think the type of project is somehow relevant to the final question, since what i'm asking si how to use the aws cli tools to create my application one resource at a time locally, without using the cloud interface to update the stack template and then copying it to my machine to run tests and eventually deploying the whole project – fudo Dec 09 '21 at 13:11

2 Answers2

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AWS's Cloud Development Kit ticks the boxes on your specific criteria.

Caveat: the CDK has a learning curve in line with its power and flexibility. There are much easier ways to deploy a web app on AWS, like the higher-level AWS Amplify framework, with abstractions tailored to front-end devs who want to minimise the mental energy spent on the underlying infrastructure.

Each of the squillion AWS and 3rd Party deploy tools is great for somebody. Nevertheless, looking at your explicit requirements in "What I expected", we can get close to the CDK as an objective answer:

Coming from a standard/classical web development

So you know JS/Python. With the CDK, you code infrastructure as functions and classes, rather than 500 lines of YAML as with SAM. The CDK's reference implementation is in Typescript. JS/Python are also supported. There are step-by-step AWS online workshops for these and the other supported languages.

create the project locally

Most of your work will be done locally in your language of choice, with a cdk deploy CLI command to bundle the deployment artefacts and send them up to the cloud.

test the related resources locally

The CDK has built-in testing and assertion support.

version it

"Deterministic deploy" is a CDK design goal. Commit your code and the generated deployment artefacts so you have change control over your infrastructure.

delegate the deployment to the pipeline

The CDK has good pipeline support: i.e. a push to the remote main branch can kick off a deploy.

fedonev
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  • This answer seems to point me in the right direction, I'll check it out asap. I have to mention that I started with aws sam since the term "serverless" has recently sounded as the near-in-the-future standard for web development, and in aws this is done by lambdas, I didn't checked out other aws services (there are too many, I tried to check out them all to find the best for me but i get lost in the docs) – fudo Dec 09 '21 at 14:22
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AWS SAM is actually a good option if you are just trying to get your feet wet with AWS. SAM is an open-source wrapper around the aws-cli, which allows you to create aws resources like Lambda in say ~10 lines of code vs ~100 lines if you were to use the aws-cli directly. Yes, you'll need to learn SAM specific things like SAMtemplate and SAM-cli but it is pretty straightforward using this doc.

Once you get the hang of it, it would be easier to start looking under the hood of what/how SAM is doing things and get into the weeds with aws-cli if you wanted. Which will then allow you to build out custom solutions (using aws-cli) for your complex use cases that SAM may not support. Caveat: SAM is still pretty new and has open issues that could be a blocker for advanced features/complex use cases.

virenstack
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