What Does This Guide Cover?

To step through the major concepts involved in building web applications, we are going to be building a simple note taking app called Scratch.

It is a single page application powered by a serverless API written completely in JavaScript. Here is the complete source for the backend and the frontend. It is a relatively simple application but we are going need to address the following requirements.

• Should allow users to signup and login to their accounts
• Users should be able to create notes with some content
• Each note can also have an uploaded file as an attachment
• Allow users to modify their note and the attachment
• Users can also delete their notes
• App should be served over HTTPS on a custom domain
• The backend APIs need to be secure
• The app needs to be responsive

We’ll be using the AWS Platform to build it. We might expand further and cover a few other platforms but we figured the AWS Platform would be a good place to start. We’ll be using the following set of technologies to build our serverless application.

• Lambda & API Gateway for our serverless API
• DynamoDB for our database
• Cognito for user authentication and securing our APIs
• S3 for hosting our app and file uploads
• CloudFront for serving out our app
• Route 53 for our domain
• Certificate Manager for SSL
• React.js for our single page app
• React Router for routing
• Bootstrap for the UI Kit

While the list above might look daunting, we are trying to ensure that upon completing the guide you’ll be ready to build real-world, secure, and fully-functional web apps. And don’t worry we’ll be around to help!

The guide covers the following concepts in order.

For the backend:

• Configure your AWS account
• Create your database using DynamoDB
• Set up S3 for file uploads
• Set up Cognito User Pools to manage user accounts
• Set up Cognito Identity Pool to secure our file uploads
• Set up the Serverless Framework to work with Lambda & API Gateway
• Write the various backend APIs

For the frontend:

• Set up our project with Create React App
• Add favicons, fonts, and a UI Kit using Bootstrap
• Set up routes using React-Router
• Use AWS Cognito SDK to login and signup users
• Plugin to the backend APIs to manage our notes
• Use the AWS JS SDK to upload files
• Create an S3 bucket to upload our app
• Configure CloudFront to serve out our app
• Point our domain with Route 53 to CloudFront
• Set up SSL to serve our app over HTTPS

We think this will give you a good foundation on building full-stack serverless applications. If there are any other concepts or technologies you’d like us to cover, feel free to let us know via email.