New Project

Clone this repo as a starting point for Lambda development.

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Local Lambda Toolkit

A set of conventions for local AWS Lambda software development.

Directory Structure

.
├── Makefile                           # Definition of `make` targets.
├── builds                             # Builds directory.
│   ├── deploy-2016-08-15_16-50.zip
│   └── deploy-2016-08-15_16-54.zip
├── cloudformation                     # CloudFormation template and parameters.
│   └── parameters.json
│   └── template.yaml
├── config.yaml                        # Static config and ParameterStore lookups.
├── index.py                           # Entry point for the Lambda function.
├── requirements                       # External dependencies.
│   ├── common.txt
│   ├── dev.txt
│   └── lambda.txt
└── tests                              # Unit tests for the package.
    ├── __init__.py
    └── utils
        ├── __init__.py
        ├── test_localcontext.py
        └── test_helpers.py
├── utils                              # Python package `utils`.
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── config.py
│   ├── localcontext.py
│   ├── helpers.py

1. Initial AWS Setup

Creates a CloudFormation stack with the Lambda function, an execution role, and an optional CloudWatch event to run on a recurring basis.

A) Stack Naming and Parameters

Edit cloudformation/parameters.json, and supply appropriate parameters.

In particular, Select appropriate values for ProjectName and EnvironmentName in cloudformation/parameters.json.

Important: The resulting CloudFormation stack will be named ${ProjectName}-${EnvironmentName}-stack, and a stack name of this form will be presumed for future CloudFormation operations.

B) Permissioning

Edit cloudformation/template.yaml and ensure that the Lambda function is appropriately permissioned via the policies attached to the LambdaFunctionExecutionRole.

C) Optional: Set Values in Parameter Store

If this Lambda function should have access to values in Parameter Store, set these on the CLI (or console); e.g.:

 aws ssm put-parameter --name "/shared/preferred-salutation" \
 --value "Hello" \
 --type String

 aws ssm put-parameter --name "/my-project/development/dynamo_table" \
 --value "stack-ResultTable-16KAA4B56PNEP" \
 --type String

Ensure that the AllowParameterAccess policy in cloudformation/template.yaml is uncommented and updated to reflect an appropriate parameter namespace(s); e.g.

# cloudformation/template.yaml
# ...
  - PolicyName: "ParameterStore"
    PolicyDocument:
      Version: "2012-10-17"
      Id: "AllowParameterAccess"
      Statement:
        - Sid: "AllowUnencryptedParameters"
          Effect: "Allow"
          Action: "ssm:GetParameter"
          Resource:
            - "Fn::Sub": "arn:aws:ssm:${AWS::Region}:${AWS::AccountId}:parameter/my-namespace.*"
            - "Fn::Sub": "arn:aws:ssm:${AWS::Region}:${AWS::AccountId}:parameter/${ProjectName}/shared/*"
# ...

When these steps are complete:

make create-stack

Updates

Update the stack as required:

make update-stack

2. Set Configuration Values

The values in config.yaml will be available as a dictionary returned by the configuration() function (as shown in index.py).

Note that environment variables will be expanded, and any key prefixed with parameterstore_ will incur a ParameterStore GetParameter on that value. If encrypted, that value will be decrypted if kms:Decrypt is available to the executing role for the given key.

3. Initial Local Setup

Sets up your local environment for local Python development by installing the development requirements from requirements/dev.txt.

Set up a new virtualenv (pyenv-virtualenv is great):

pyenv virtualenv my-project
pyenv activate my-project

And then install the local dependencies:

make init

Optional: Assume the Lambda Role

To simulate permissioning parity between the Lambda environment and local, assume the Lambda role created by CloudFormation by creating a new entry in ~/.aws/config:

# ~/.aws/config

[profile regular]
output = json
region = us-west-2

[profile development]
output = json
region = us-west-2
source_profile = regular
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/LambdaFunctionExecutionRo-34K8PIBFMONR

Set development as the current profile via export AWS_PROFILE=development.

4. Run tests

Runs all the unit tests in the tests/ directory.

make test

4. Invoke the function locally

Runs the Python code on your local machine.

make invoke

5. Build a package for Lambda

Creates a deployable Lambda zip file, and places into builds. Note that:

• Only requirements/lambda.txt dependencies will be included
• .pyc are removed from the repo before build is initiated
• All directories save for a blacklist (.git/, tests/, etc) will be included, as will any .py and .yaml files

make build

6. Deploy

Sends the build to a Lambda ARN. Note that $ARN must be set, or this will result in an error. It can be easily retrieved via make describe-stack.

ARN=arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:111111111111:function:my-function-name make deploy

7. Delete Everything

Deletes the CloudFormation stack.

make delete-stack