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Building Serverless Python Web Services with Zappa
Building Serverless Python Web Services with Zappa

Building Serverless Python Web Services with Zappa: Build and deploy serverless applications on AWS using Zappa

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.5 (2 Ratings)
Paperback Jul 2018 324 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Barguzar
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.5 (2 Ratings)
Paperback Jul 2018 324 pages 1st Edition
eBook
S$32.99 S$47.99
Paperback
S$59.99
Subscription
Free Trial
eBook
S$32.99 S$47.99
Paperback
S$59.99
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Building Serverless Python Web Services with Zappa

Getting Started with Zappa

Previously, we learned about creating a serverless application using the AWS Web Console and AWS CLI. Now, we are going to learn about Zappa and automating operations for creating a serverless application. 

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following topics:

  • What is Zappa?
  • Installing and configuring Zappa
  • Building, testing, and deploying a Python web service using Zappa
  • Zappa's uses

Technical requirements

Before moving ahead, let's ensure we fulfill the technical requirements. The following subsections will go over the hardware and software requirements for this chapter.

Hardware

For demonstration purposes, we used a basic configured machine with the following specification:

  • Memory—16GB
  • ProcessorIntel Core i5
  • CPU2.30GHz x 4
  • GraphicsIntel HD Graphics 520

Software

The following are the software specifications:

  • OSUbuntu 16.04 LTS
  • OS-Type64 bit
  • Python 3.6
  • Python development packages: build...

What is Zappa?

Zappa is an open source tool that was developed and designed by Rich Jones, founder/CTO of Gun.io (https://www.gun.io/). Zappa was mainly designed to build and deploy serverless Python applications on AWS Lambda and API Gateway.  

Zappa is great for deploying serverless Python microservices with frameworks such as Flask and Bottle for hosting large web applications and CMSes with Django. You can also deploy any Python WSGI application as well.

In the previous chapter, we implemented the basic hello world microservice, using AWS Lambda and API Gateway. Zappa automates all these manual processes and gives us a handy tool to build and deploy Python applications.

It's as easy as this:

$ pip install zappa
$ zappa init
$ zappa deploy

As we described earlier, the tradition of web hosting is where the server needs to be always online, listening to HTTP requests...

Installing and configuring Zappa

Installing Zappa is a straightforward task, but before we move ahead, we need to configure the prerequisites. Make sure you have Python 2.7 or Python 3.6 and have a valid AWS account. Now, you need to configure the AWS credentials on your machine with help awscli:

$ pip install awscli

Configure the AWS credentials using the aws configure command, as shown in the following screenshot:

The configuration for AWS credentials requires that you have an AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Access Key, Default region name, and a Default output format.

You can get AWS credential information from your My Security Credentials page, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you've configured your AWS credentials, we can move ahead with Zappa's installation.

Zappa must be installed in a virtual environment. It's strongly recommended...

Building, testing, and deploying a Python web service using Zappa

We are going to create a simple hello world program as a microservice using Python's Bottle framework. Let's follow some basic steps to configure a small project using the Bottle framework:

  1. First, we will create a new project directory named lambda_bottle_poc:
    $ mkdir lambda_bottle_poc
  2. Let's create a virtual environment inside the lambda_bottle_poc directory:
    $ virtualenv env -p python3.6
  3. Here is the basic hello world program using the Bottle framework:

Now it's time to deploy the program as serverless on AWS Lambda and expose the /hello API via API Gateway. In the previous chapter, we described the manual process to deploy the Python application, using AWS console and AWS CLI, which was a really big challenge.

But with the help of Zappa, all manual processes of the AWS console and AWS...

Basic uses

Zappa covers each and every deployment process. Let's have a detailed discussion regarding the deployment flow with Zappa.

Initial deployments

Once you are done with initializing Zappa, then you can deploy the application on to the production stage in a single command, as shown in the following code snippet:

$ zappa deploy production
.
.
.
Deployment complete ! https://071h4br4e0.execute-api.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/production

When you call the $ zappa deploy command, Zappa performs some tasks to complete the deployment. The following is the internal flow and process of Zappa regarding deployment:

  1. Compress the application code in your local environment into a ZIP archive by replacing any dependencies...

Summary

Zappa provides flexible features so that you can perform the deployment process. We covered the basic uses of Zappa and gained an understanding of the packaging and deployment process. Zappa makes it very simple and easy for developers to configure and perform the deployment of an application to a serverless environment.

Questions

  1. What is Zappa?
  2. How can we secure the application in AWS?
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Key benefits

  • • Scalable serverless Python web services using Django, Flask, and Pyramid.
  • • Learn Asynchronous task execution on AWS Lambda and scheduling using Zappa.
  • • Implementing Zappa in a Docker container.

Description

Serverless applications are becoming very popular these days, not just because they save developers the trouble of managing the servers, but also because they provide several other benefits such as cutting heavy costs and improving the overall performance of the application. This book will help you build serverless applications in a quick and efficient way. We begin with an introduction to AWS and the API gateway, the environment for serverless development, and Zappa. We then look at building, testing, and deploying apps in AWS with three different frameworks--Flask, Django, and Pyramid. Setting up a custom domain along with SSL certificates and configuring them with Zappa is also covered. A few advanced Zappa settings are also covered along with securing Zappa with AWS VPC. By the end of the book you will have mastered using three frameworks to build robust and cost-efficient serverless apps in Python.

Who is this book for?

Python Developers who are interested in learning how to develop fast and highly scalable serverless applications in Python, will find this book useful

What you will learn

  • Build, test, and deploy a simple web service using AWS CLI
  • Integrate Flask-based Python applications, via AWS CLI configuration
  • Design Rest APIs integrated with Zappa for Flask and Django
  • Create a project in the Pyramid framework and configure it with Zappa
  • Generate SSL Certificates using Amazon Certificate Manager
  • Configure custom domains with AWS Route 53
  • Create a Docker container similar to AWS Lambda

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Jul 30, 2018
Length: 324 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788837613
Vendor :
Amazon
Languages :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Product Details

Publication date : Jul 30, 2018
Length: 324 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788837613
Vendor :
Amazon
Languages :
Concepts :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

14 Chapters
Amazon Web Services for Serverless Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Getting Started with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Flask Application with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Flask-Based REST API with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Django Application with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Django REST API with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Falcon Application with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Custom Domain with SSL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Asynchronous Task Execution on AWS Lambda Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Advanced Zappa Settings Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Securing Serverless Applications with Zappa Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Zappa with Docker Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Assessments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Being new to AWS I was looking for a slightly deeper dive than an admin book could provide. Barguzar's book explained everything quite simply, while providing practical examples every step of the way.
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