PDF Serverless Single Page Apps Fast Scalable and Available Ben Rady 9781680501490 Books

Product details Paperback 214 pages Publisher Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (June 24, 2016) Language English ISBN-10 1680501496

Serverless Single Page Apps Fast Scalable and Available Ben Rady 9781680501490 Books Reviews

• I found this book extremely useful, concise, and easy to follow. It gives even a novice coder the tools to make a full-stack, fully functional AWS Lambda web site. I bought myself a copy in 2017, and just bought another one for my local makerspace. This is a vastly underrated resource, in my opinion.
• Was expecting a bit more depth in the serverless parts. Quite a lot of JavaScript practices in the first part.
• This is a solid book for building a serverless application. It reads a bit like an intro to programming/cloud book. I would have given it 5 stars but I would have preferred less handholding and explanations for principles like test-driven development.
• If you want to do a deep dive on the use of multiple AWS sevices to create a modern, serverless web application, this is the book for you.
  
  The author follows a single development project all the way from idea to deployment so that you see how to actually build something using th same se web services.
  
  If you are contemplating moving to the new serverless paradigm this book czn help you take the first step in that journey.
• Delivering a welcome antidote to the framework-mania that's taken hold of web application development, Ben Rady has put together an excellent tutorial on how to create web-based solutions that are simple, testable, scalable, and most importantly maintainable in a cost-effective and incremental fashion. Despite the emphasis on "serverless", the techniques shared in this book are also applicable to enterprise environments where the deployment and standardization benefits of browser-based application hosting can be especially valuable and cost-effective.
  
  If you are looking to learn more about AWS and "cloud computing", Ben's book offers a focused, concise introduction. However, the real value of this book is its treatment of "single-page" applications. There are many resources out there for learning about AWS and other cloud providers, but this is the best resource that I know of for learning about single-page design.
  
  That said, as a tutorial on serverless toolkits, the book does an outstanding job of cutting through the hype. Via a running example, each chapter presents solutions using 's AWS toolkit (but applicable to any similar provider's tools) that can defer or even eliminate the need to provision (and maintain) infrastructure for services such as databases, queues, load-balancing & security. As the book repeatedly emphasizes, all of this can be done at a fraction of the cost of provisioning client/server solutions - both for speculative projects and when scaling up successful ideas.
  
  As mentioned above, the single-page design approach presented here is the star of the book. Single-page designs apply the content sharing strengths of web browsers to core application logic and workflow - responsibilities usually residing in back-end processes or non-web applications. This type of design can really take advantage of serverless tools; that the two are combined in this book shows the author's deep understanding of both topics.
  
  Like most modern web-apps, single-page apps fetch data as needed using asynchronous javascript. Additionally, they move view selection and routing into the client - no web server is accessed for this behavior. This allows for fast, responsive designs that feel more like traditional desktop applications, while still retaining browser URL semantics (like the back button working). Each chapter, these techniques are expanded upon (along with the serverless material) resulting in a design that levers the respective strengths of HTML, CSS & Javascript while keeping things simple and understandable.
  
  Finally, the book's engaging style is concise & coherent. Ideas are logically presented and detailed. The example code is well-tested, thorough and easy to use. In sum This book offers excellent value to anyone who wants to learn anything about the topics in question. Highly recommended.
• It looks interesting but if you are trying to do this on Windows, good luck! You will find yourself trying to make your windows machine into a Linux machine. It would be great if this was made more clear or even had a Windows version. Quite frustrating.
• This book does a great job of answering the questions you've got about how to fulfill the needs of a modern web app without owning what the app is served from. Using AWS technologies like Lambda, S3, DynamoDB and Cognito paired up with easy to understand and testable Javascript, you'll have created your own web app by the time you finish reading. You'll even have an idea of what it's going to cost to run the app for a non-trivial number of users!
  
  Most importantly, this book doesn't require its reader to have a deep knowledge of web development frameworks. The book skillfully demonstrates how you can create a fully fleshed out product using basic Javascript with a bit of jQuery for client-side code and Node.js for the Lambda functions (basically the server-side code). By requiring little from the reader in terms of pre-reading preparation, this book takes a serious look at how both professionals and hobbyists can create successful web apps by taking advantage of modern web toolsets. Thanks in part to it's conversational tone, everybody from a professional developer, an intermediate enthusiast or a determined beginner will find the contents of this book valuable.
  
  I've recommended this book to my software engineer co-workers that were starting a new web app and also to my technology minded friends who wanted to build their own web site for fun.
• Serverless Single Page Apps walks you through building a low-cost, highly-available, serverless single page web application. It does this on top of various web services (DynamoDB, Cognito, Lambda, API Gateway, S3). If you follow along you’ll end up with a simple web application with authentication.
  
  The book is very enjoyable. The examples are clear and the book is well written. The book uses JavaScript to implement the serverless application. For the user interface it uses plain JavaScript with a bit of jQuery and for the AWS Lambda functions you dip into some Node.js. Serverless doesn’t distract you from learning about serverless applications by forcing you to learn new JavaScript frameworks or libraries.
  
  One of my favorite parts of the book is Ben’s use of test driven development. The examples provided give the reader a decent taste of the benefits of test-first development. Having the tests helped me when I made some silly mistakes in later parts of the book.
  
  Overall I’d recommend this book to developers who are interested in learning what a serverless application might look like. If you follow along you’ll know how to build one by the end and will have a good starting point for diving deeper into the topic.