Deploy a Full-Stack Realtime App in seconds using Serverless Components. Just provide your frontend code (powered by the website component), and your backend code (powered by the socket component).

Great use-cases for this project are: Chat Apps, Bots, Notification Systems, Charting Dashboards, Stock Tickers & more. As always, consider a serverless stack like this if you are looking to deliver software or features with extremely low overhead.

 

1. Install
2. Create
3. Configure
4. Deploy
5. Example
6. Pricing

 

1. Install

1$ npm install -g @serverless/components

2. Create

1$ mkdir my-realtime-app && cd my-realtime-app

the directory should look something like this:

|- backend
  |- socket.js
|- frontend
  |- index.html
|- serverless.yml
|- .env      # your development AWS api keys
|- .env.prod # your production AWS api keys

the .env files are not required if you have the aws keys set globally and you want to use a single stage, but they should look like this.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXX
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXX

the socket.js file should minimally look something like this:

1on('default', async (data, socket) => {
2  socket.send(data)
3})
4

For more info on working with the socket.js file, check out the socket component docs.

To see a full example of an application built with this, check out this Chat Application.

3. Configure

1# serverless.yml
2
3name: my-realtime-app
4stage: dev
5
6RealtimeApp:
7  component: "@serverless/realtime-app"
8  inputs:
9    name: my-realtime-app
10    description: My Realtime App
11    region: us-east-1
12
13    # backend config to be passed to the socket component
14    backend:
15      # path to the backend code that contains the socket.js file
16      code: ./backend
17
18      memory: 512
19      timeout: 10
20      env:
21        TABLE_NAME: users
22
23    # frontend config to be passed to the website component
24    frontend:
25        # path to the directory that contains your frontend code
26        # if you're using a framework like React, that would be the root of your frontend project, otherwise it'd be where index.html lives.
27        # default is './frontend'
28        code: ./static
29        
30        # if your website needs to be built (e.g. using React)...
31        # default is "undefined"
32        build:
33        
34          # the path to the build directory. default is ./build
35          dir: ./dist
36          
37          # the build command
38          command: npm run build # this is the default anyway!
39          
40          # you can provide an env file path (relative to the code path above) to be generated for use by your frontend code. By default it's './src/env.js'
41          envFile: ./frontend/src/env.js
42          
43          # the contents of this env file
44          # the backend api url will be injected by default
45          # under the "urlWebsocketApi" key
46          env:
47            SOME_API_URL: https://api.com

4. Deploy

1realtime-app (master)$ ️components
2
3  RealtimeApp › outputs:
4  frontend: 
5    url:  'http://realtimeapp-lwmb8jd.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com'
6    env:  undefined
7  backend: 
8    url:  'wss://rzrqzb6z4h.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/'
9    env:  []
10
11
12  14s › dev › RealtimeApp › done
13
14realtime-app (master)$
15

5. Example

You can see a full Chat Application that uses this Component in the example folder. It leverages AWS DynamoDB to maintain state of who is connected, so that messages can be sent out to the appropriate connection IDs.

You can also see how this Component can be used programmatically in the Chat App Component's source code.

6. Pricing

AWS API Gateway Websockets Pricing https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/pricing/#WebSocket_APIs

AWS Lambda Pricing https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/

 

New to Components?

Checkout the Serverless Components repo for more information.