Run serverless applications and REST APIs using your existing Fastify application. By default, Fastify won't work on your serverless platform of choice, you'll need to make some small changes to fix this. This document contains a small guide for the most famous serverless providers and how to use Fastify with them.
That's up to you! Keep in mind that functions as a service should always use small and focused functions, but you can also run an entire web application with them. It's important to remember that the bigger the application, the slower the initial boot will be. The best way to use for running Fastify applications in serverless environments is to use platforms like Google Cloud Run, AWS Fargate, and Azure Container Instances, where the server can handle multiple requests at the same time and make full use of Fastify features.
One of the best features of using Fastify in serverless applications is the ease of development. In your local environment, you will always run directly the Fastify application without the need for any additional tool, while the same code will be executed in your serverless platform of choice with an additional snippet of code.
The sample provided allows you to easily build serverless web applications/services and RESTful APIs using Fastify on top of AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway.
Note: Using aws-lambda-fastify is just one possible way.
const fastify = require('fastify');
function init() {
const app = fastify();
app.get('/', (request, reply) => reply.send({ hello: 'world' }));
return app;
}
if (require.main === module) {
// called directly i.e. "node app"
init().listen(3000, (err) => {
if (err) console.error(err);
console.log('server listening on 3000');
});
} else {
// required as a module => executed on aws lambda
module.exports = init;
}
When executed in your lambda function we do not need to listen to a specific port,
so we just export the wrapper function init
in this case.
The lambda.js
file will use this export.
When you execute your Fastify application like always,
i.e. node app.js
(the detection for this could be require.main === module
),
you can normally listen to your port, so you can still run your Fastify function locally.
const awsLambdaFastify = require('aws-lambda-fastify')
const init = require('./app');
const proxy = awsLambdaFastify(init())
// or
// const proxy = awsLambdaFastify(init(), { binaryMimeTypes: ['application/octet-stream'] })
exports.handler = proxy;
// or
// exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => proxy(event, context, callback);
// or
// exports.handler = (event, context) => proxy(event, context);
// or
// exports.handler = async (event, context) => proxy(event, context);
We just require aws-lambda-fastify
(make sure you install the dependency npm i --save aws-lambda-fastify
) and our
app.js
file and call the
exported awsLambdaFastify
function with the app
as the only parameter.
The resulting proxy
function has the correct signature to be used as lambda handler
function.
This way all the incoming events (API Gateway requests) are passed to the proxy
function of aws-lambda-fastify.
An example deployable with claudia.js can be found here.
- API Gateway does not support streams yet, so you are not able to handle streams.
- API Gateway has a timeout of 29 seconds, so it is important to provide a reply during this time.
Unlike AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions, Google Cloud Run is a serverless container environment. It's primary purpose is to provide an infrastructure-abstracted environment to run arbitrary containers. As a result, Fastify can be deployed to Google Cloud Run with little-to-no code changes from the way you would write your Fastify app normally.
Follow the steps below to deploy to Google Cloud Run if you are already familiar with gcloud or just follow their quickstart.
In order for Fastify to properly listen for requests within the container, be sure to set the correct port and address:
function build() {
const fastify = Fastify({ trustProxy: true })
return fastify
}
async function start() {
// Google Cloud Run will set this environment variable for you, so
// you can also use it to detect if you are running in Cloud Run
const IS_GOOGLE_CLOUD_RUN = process.env.K_SERVICE !== undefined
// You must listen on the port Cloud Run provides
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000
// You must listen on all IPV4 addresses in Cloud Run
const address = IS_GOOGLE_CLOUD_RUN ? "0.0.0.0" : undefined
try {
const server = build()
const address = await server.listen(port, address)
console.log(`Listening on ${address}`)
} catch (err) {
console.error(err)
process.exit(1)
}
}
module.exports = build
if (require.main === module) {
start()
}
You can add any valid Dockerfile
that packages and runs a Node app. A basic Dockerfile
can be found in the official gcloud docs.
# Use the official Node.js 10 image.
# https://hub.docker.com/_/node
FROM node:10
# Create and change to the app directory.
WORKDIR /usr/src/app
# Copy application dependency manifests to the container image.
# A wildcard is used to ensure both package.json AND package-lock.json are copied.
# Copying this separately prevents re-running npm install on every code change.
COPY package*.json ./
# Install production dependencies.
RUN npm install --only=production
# Copy local code to the container image.
COPY . .
# Run the web service on container startup.
CMD [ "npm", "start" ]
To keep build artifacts out of your container (which keeps it small and improves build times), add a .dockerignore
file like the one below:
Dockerfile
README.md
node_modules
npm-debug.log
Next, submit your app to be built into a Docker image by running the following command (replacing PROJECT-ID
and APP-NAME
with your GCP project id and an app name):
gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/PROJECT-ID/APP-NAME
After your image has built, you can deploy it with the following command:
gcloud beta run deploy --image gcr.io/PROJECT-ID/APP-NAME --platform managed
Your app will be accessible from the URL GCP provides.
First, please do all preparation steps related to AWS Lambda.
Create folder called functions
then create server.js
(and your endpoint path will be server.js
) inside functions
folder.
export { handler } from '../lambda.js'; // Change `lambda.js` path to your `lambda.js` path
[build]
# This will be run the site build
command = "npm run build:functions"
# This is the directory is publishing to netlify's CDN
# and this is directory of your front of your app
# publish = "build"
# functions build directory
functions = "functions-build" # always appends `-build` folder to your `functions` folder for builds
Don't forget add this Webpack config, else a lot of problems can occur
const nodeExternals = require('webpack-node-externals');
const dotenv = require('dotenv-safe');
const webpack = require('webpack');
const env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production';
const dev = env === 'development';
if (dev) {
dotenv.config({ allowEmptyValues: true });
}
module.exports = {
mode: env,
devtool: dev ? 'eval-source-map' : 'none',
externals: [nodeExternals()],
devServer: {
proxy: {
'/.netlify': {
target: 'http://localhost:9000',
pathRewrite: { '^/.netlify/functions': '' }
}
}
},
module: {
rules: []
},
plugins: [
new webpack.DefinePlugin({
'process.env.APP_ROOT_PATH': JSON.stringify('/'),
'process.env.NETLIFY_ENV': true,
'process.env.CONTEXT': env
})
]
};
Add this command to your package.json
scripts
"scripts": {
...
"build:functions": "netlify-lambda build functions --config ./webpack.config.netlify.js"
...
}
Then it should work fine
Vercel provides zero configuration deployment for
Node.js applications. In order to use now, it is as simple as
configuring your vercel.json
file like the following:
{
"rewrites": [
{
"source": "/(.*)",
"destination": "/api/serverless.js"
}
]
}
Then, write a api/serverless.js
like so:
"use strict";
// Read the .env file.
import * as dotenv from "dotenv";
dotenv.config();
// Require the framework
import Fastify from "fastify";
// Instantiate Fastify with some config
const app = Fastify({
logger: true,
});
// Register your application as a normal plugin.
app.register(import("../src/app"));
export default async (req, res) => {
await app.ready();
app.server.emit('request', req, res);
}