lambda-api

Lightweight web framework for your serverless applications

Lambda API is a lightweight web framework for AWS Lambda using AWS API Gateway Lambda Proxy Integration or ALB Lambda Target Support. This closely mirrors (and is based on) other web frameworks like Express.js and Fastify, but is significantly stripped down to maximize performance with Lambda's stateless, single run executions.

Using AWS SDK v2?

lambda-api@v1 is using AWS SDK v3. If you are using AWS SDK v2, please use lambda-api@v0.12.0.

Simple Example

// Require the framework and instantiate it
const api = require('lambda-api')();

// Define a route
api.get('/status', async (req, res) => {
  return { status: 'ok' };
});

// Declare your Lambda handler
exports.handler = async (event, context) => {
  // Run the request
  return await api.run(event, context);
};

For a full tutorial see How To: Build a Serverless API with Serverless, AWS Lambda and Lambda API.

Why Another Web Framework?

Express.js, Fastify, Koa, Restify, and Hapi are just a few of the many amazing web frameworks out there for Node.js. So why build yet another one when there are so many great options already? One word: DEPENDENCIES.

These other frameworks are extremely powerful, but that benefit comes with the steep price of requiring several additional Node.js modules. Not only is this a bit of a security issue (see Beware of Third-Party Packages in Securing Serverless), but it also adds bloat to your codebase, filling your node_modules directory with a ton of extra files. For serverless applications that need to load quickly, all of these extra dependencies slow down execution and use more memory than necessary. Express.js has 30 dependencies, Fastify has 12, and Hapi has 17! These numbers don't even include their dependencies' dependencies.

Lambda API has ZERO dependencies. None. Zip. Zilch.

Lambda API was written to be extremely lightweight and built specifically for SERVERLESS applications using AWS Lambda and API Gateway. It provides support for API routing, serving up HTML pages, issuing redirects, serving binary files and much more. Worried about observability? Lambda API has a built-in logging engine that can even periodically sample requests for things like tracing and benchmarking. It has a powerful middleware and error handling system, allowing you to implement just about anything you can dream of. Best of all, it was designed to work with Lambda's Proxy Integration, automatically handling all the interaction with API Gateway for you. It parses REQUESTS and formats RESPONSES, allowing you to focus on your application's core functionality, instead of fiddling with inputs and outputs.

Single Purpose Functions

You may have heard that a serverless "best practice" is to keep your functions small and limit them to a single purpose. I generally agree since building monolith applications is not what serverless was designed for. However, what exactly is a "single purpose" when it comes to building serverless APIs and web services? Should we create a separate function for our "create user" POST endpoint and then another one for our "update user" PUT endpoint? Should we create yet another function for our "delete user" DELETE endpoint? You certainly could, but that seems like a lot of repeated boilerplate code. On the other hand, you could create just one function that handled all your user management features. It may even make sense (in certain circumstances) to create one big serverless function handling several related components that can share your VPC database connections.

Whatever you decide is best for your use case, Lambda API is there to support you. Whether your function has over a hundred routes, or just one, Lambda API's small size and lightning fast load time has virtually no impact on your function's performance. You can even define global wildcard routes that will process any incoming request, allowing you to use API Gateway or ALB to determine the routing. Yet despite its small footprint, it gives you the power of a full-featured web framework.

Table of Contents

• Simple Example
• Why Another Web Framework?
  • Single Purpose Functions
• Table of Contents
• Installation
• Requirements
• Configuration
• Recent Updates
  • v0.11: API Gateway v2 payload support and automatic compression
  • v0.10: ALB support, method-based middleware, and multi-value headers and query string parameters
• Routes and HTTP Methods
• Returning Responses
  • Async/Await
  • Promises
  • A Note About Flow Control
• Route Prefixing
• Debugging Routes
• REQUEST
• RESPONSE
  • status(code)
  • sendStatus(code)
  • header(key, value [,append])
  • getHeader(key [,asArray])
  • getHeaders()
  • hasHeader(key)
  • removeHeader(key)
  • getLink(s3Path [, expires] [, callback])
  • send(body)
  • json(body)
  • jsonp(body)
  • html(body)
  • type(type)
  • location(path)
  • redirect([status,] path)
  • cors([options])
  • error([code], message [,detail])
  • cookie(name, value [,options])
  • clearCookie(name [,options])
  • etag([boolean])
  • cache([age] [, private])
  • modified(date)
  • attachment([filename])
  • download(file [, filename] [, options] [, callback])
  • sendFile(file [, options] [, callback])
• Enabling Binary Support
• Path Parameters
• Wildcard Routes
• Logging
  • Logging Configuration
  • Log Format
  • Access Logs
  • Logging Levels
  • Custom Logging Levels
  • Adding Additional Detail
  • Serializers
  • Sampling
• Middleware
  • Restricting middleware execution to certain path(s)
  • Specifying multiple middleware
  • Method-based middleware
• Clean Up
• Error Handling
  • Error Types
  • Error Logging
• Namespaces
• CORS Support
• Compression
• Execution Stacks
• Lambda Proxy Integration
• ALB Integration
• Configuring Routes in API Gateway
• Reusing Persistent Connections
• TypeScript Support
• Contributions
• Are you using Lambda API?

Installation

npm i lambda-api --save

Requirements

• AWS Lambda running Node 8.10+
• AWS API Gateway using Proxy Integration

Configuration

Require the lambda-api module into your Lambda handler script and instantiate it. You can initialize the API with the following options:

// Require the framework and instantiate it with optional version and base parameters
const api = require('lambda-api')({ version: 'v1.0', base: 'v1' });

Recent Updates

For detailed release notes see Releases.

v0.11: API Gateway v2 payload support and automatic compression

Lambda API now supports API Gateway v2 payloads for use with HTTP APIs. The library automatically detects the payload, so no extra configuration is needed. Automatic compression has also been added and supports Brotli, Gzip and Deflate.

v0.10: ALB support, method-based middleware, and multi-value headers and query string parameters

Lambda API now allows you to seamlessly switch between API Gateway and Application Load Balancers. New execution stacks enables method-based middleware and more wildcard functionality. Plus full support for multi-value headers and query string parameters.

Routes and HTTP Methods

Routes are defined by using convenience methods or the METHOD method. There are currently eight convenience route methods: get(), post(), put(), patch(), delete(), head(), options() and any(). Convenience route methods require an optional route and one or more handler functions. A route is simply a path such as /users. If a route is not provided, then it will default to /* and will execute on every path. Handler functions accept a REQUEST, RESPONSE, and optional next() argument. These arguments can be named whatever you like, but convention dictates req, res, and next.

Multiple handler functions can be assigned to a path, which can be used to execute middleware for specific paths and methods. For more information, see Middleware and Execution Stacks.

Examples using convenience route methods:

api.get('/users', (req,res) => {
  // do something
})

api.post('/users', (req,res) => {
  // do something
})

api.delete('/users', (req,res) => {
  // do something
})

api.get('/users',
  (req,res,next) => {
    // do some middleware
    next() // continue execution
  }),
  (req,res) => {
    // do something
  }
)

api.post((req,res) => {
  // do something for ALL post requests
})

Additional methods are support by calling METHOD. Arguments must include an HTTP method (or array of methods), an optional route, and one or more handler functions. Like the convenience methods above, handler functions accept a REQUEST, RESPONSE, and optional next argument.

api.METHOD('trace','/users', (req,res) => {
  // do something on TRACE
})

api.METHOD(['post','put'],'/users', (req,res) => {
  // do something on POST -or- PUT
})

api.METHOD('get','/users',
  (req,res,next) => {
    // do some middleware
    next() // continue execution
  }),
  (req,res) => {
  // do something
  }
)

All GET methods have a HEAD alias that executes the GET request but returns a blank body. GET requests should be idempotent with no side effects. The head() convenience method can be used to set specific paths for HEAD requests or to override default GET aliasing.

Routes that use the any() method or pass ANY to api.METHOD will respond to all HTTP methods. Routes that specify a specific method (such as GET or POST), will override the route for that method. For example:

api.any('/users', (req, res) => {
  res.send('any');
});
api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  res.send('get');
});

A POST to /users will return "any", but a GET request would return "get". Please note that routes defined with an ANY method will override default HEAD aliasing for GET routes.

Returning Responses

Lambda API supports both callback-style and async-await for returning responses to users. The RESPONSE object has several callbacks that will trigger a response (send(), json(), html(), etc.) You can use any of these callbacks from within route functions and middleware to send the response:

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  res.send({ foo: 'bar' });
});

You can also return data from route functions and middleware. The contents will be sent as the body:

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  return { foo: 'bar' };
});

Async/Await

If you prefer to use async/await, you can easily apply this to your route functions.

Using return:

api.get('/users', async (req, res) => {
  let users = await getUsers();
  return users;
});

Or using callbacks:

api.get('/users', async (req, res) => {
  let users = await getUsers();
  res.send(users);
});

Promises

If you like promises, you can either use a callback like res.send() at the end of your promise chain, or you can simply return the resolved promise:

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  getUsers().then((users) => {
    res.send(users);
  });
});

OR

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  return getUsers().then((users) => {
    return users;
  });
});

IMPORTANT: You must either use a callback like res.send() OR return a value. Otherwise the execution will hang and no data will be sent to the user. Also, be sure not to return undefined, otherwise it will assume no response.

A Note About Flow Control

While callbacks like res.send() and res.error() will trigger a response, they will not necessarily terminate execution of the current route function. Take a look at the following example:

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  if (req.headers.test === 'test') {
    res.error('Throw an error');
  }

  return { foo: 'bar' };
});

The example above would not have the intended result of displaying an error. res.error() would signal Lambda API to execute the error handling, but the function would continue to run. This would cause the function to return a response that would override the intended error. In this situation, you could either wrap the return in an else clause, or a cleaner approach would be to return the call to the error() method, like so:

api.get('/users', (req, res) => {
  if (req.headers.test